Sample Poems by Maureen Alsop

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Approbation

The sun's sun, the erasure of weeds press west against each window. Love's mouth
is a wound made to answer. I am filled
by incalculable sounds wherein the body defines itself for failing. I am filled by the rain
in the mind entering. I hear the rain's footstep lay waste
in the grass crashing over. I am an old knife softening. I am oars of ghost ships wherein
the sea swells its salt in me. Shores splinter
with the depth of the no-more-world. Only pages past
flip past. Owlstripes in the linden leaves; quills
sanctioned to the places the body abandoned.

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Elysium

What we knew of the beginning-it was
not like dying-later
we learn the voices we called against glass, names
speed in pines, justified

the wind. But it was always. Only
body. Telling you of a place. A shared secret
the lungs buried. Winter's sullied praxis.

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In The Recurrent Dream Of A Near Death Experience The Reddest Rhododendron Beams

You will say you are overdrawn and have piled your aftermath
in the best wheelbarrow. You'll find the wind's yellow surface
over the woods presses through your sleep. That afternoon
at the post office you bloody your sleeve, swear publicly. Your arm
thins into a gold stitch of unraveled embroidery. A little hawk-light
settles around you. A little red door, jagged under the high turn

of the sun, recedes. O, croon with faltering, sullen beauty. The reddest
rhododendron beams like bird's shadow, and in itself,
is an infinite cloth. Now you are in the fixed galaxy,
the slanted mind cast apart from the body. Corvine stars,
luminous wing-blades, pulse smoke through pigweed.

There are atrophies in the lung. There are epilogues
based on a pile of old gin bottles. Reluctant darkling,
you sip the wetted dust as October heat waves

level the mountain. Thus you will die by the sea. Die

by the inside reel of the die. Darkness eyes
darkness. What know you, prognosticator? Jasmine
loosens its calculation against stone,
blossoms spark into the charitable scent of mulch. The room
orbits your reappearance. Say it is your will.

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The Summer From Which I Come

On the high bluff of Huron's coastline she remembers only
I am not in the room. I'm vibrant gone
on the lake edge. All over August,
dotted after images of green, everything
last seen around her. Rafters of the house
pixilated in dust, old conversations
polish the wide table with chairs. Ink dries
over her lips. Sleep is water
spilling through cranium. Under her spell,
in my wool coat, a blare at the window, the whole house
boarded in a fresh dark.