Farmhouse, Castor
early sun limns
the plate rail a kitchen
reduced to grit & shambles
butcher block table
wallpaper slumped about its knees
light here reveals
only absence
teasel in the bones of
the victory garden thrusting
barrel staves like iron ribs
what we have come for
lilacs pressing in
these diamond panes their blossom
stark & fragrant across the hearth
rainwater shifting in
the stair’s curved spine
how this land holds everything &
nothing back
~ Jenna Butler
Jenna Butler is an educator, book reviewer, editor and poet. Her work has won a number of awards and has been widely published in literary magazines, journals and anthologies in North America and Europe. She has edited nineteen collections of poetry in Canada and England, and is currently working toward a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK. Her new collection of poems, Forcing Bloom, is scheduled for release by Mercutio Press in 2007. Butler lives in Edmonton, Alberta with her husband, where she is the founding editor of Rubicon Press.
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