Poetry: Rebecca Givens Rolland

Rebecca Givens Rolland‘s first book of poems, The Wreck of Birds, won the 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire First Book Prize and was published by Bauhan Publishing. Her poems have recently appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, and American Letters & Commentary. Currently she is a doctoral student in education at Harvard.

 

PRESENCE

Bring on the unborn, the as-yet-
                    unreleased—let the sand-trap
convex, turn mechanism
                    at the throat’s base, beating
gold with the threat of steeped
                    branches, bleating over and
over tired till the hash
                    of rain no longer treads
lightly, thrushes hunger
                    fallowly abroad, chest whips
tree-long, under its own
                    houses, its burnished hair—
pockets of evening menace,
                    oiled scallions, roots catalyze
the pot into ash, the pan
                    into blackness, banging
ceasingly the steel-cut
                    edge—let knees be a flicker
of over, feet find light sleep
                    under ribs—seahorse battling
affliction of undamaged
                    fluid, meadow in the hip of
presence, angled forward
                    till only grass, only field-rot,
finds blooms—now harkens,
                    multiplies to a thousand
entitlements of solitary
                    leaves—for once commands
mutter forces, smatter
                    darkness to the inner ear—