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Sally Delehant Reading

Sally Delehant — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:53:59 +0000

Oubliette

Sally Delehant — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:08:12 +0000

In the knell 
we looked for words. 

The knock of a fork — 
nothing.   

Time tossed intimacy
around the kitchen  

and readied on the range
a rabbit’s red meat.

    How could music presume 
to mimic the sea?  

The cuff itself
wrapped and pounding.

    If we tried to climb —
 if we searched for a ladder

  our kisses made the collar,
 forgot us

    all the same. Words 
for a while wandered,  

came back to dance at us 
winded—    

swallowed.
I couldn’t  believe it hurt.

Sandstorm

Sally Delehant — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:32:47 +0000

Farmers move

market-hooved—

grab grain from the trough.

Invention flattens a faded name

how wire pins a hand-hold,

a push on the wind.

The whipped pearl a mother peddles in grass

taunting straw grown taut, our cattle commodity

our prattling in milk rain. We make stay.

Animals themselves are thinly made, caged in

a cagey reign—

food flood, chain graze.

A gray is a gray is a gray.

By any name produce, by any wet peel,

each worm is warm,

and the turn is terrible. In what economy

are made pockets for a rock piece?

Snowed Up

Sally Delehant — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:13:14 +0000

Flashed in and feeding
                                thundersnow appends the street.
Dependent on diction—
the poem as procedure,
as being punched in the stomach one too many times. One
is too many times in terms of stomach punches.
                                                                   In terms
of thundersnow, the street is now covered. I watch
small children refuse to walk in it. They cross their arms and ask
to be carried.
                    In terms of that feeling, I’m sewn up always.
Dependent on inclinations toward you and the poem —
the blur thick with lightning and ice.
Do you look through the windshield or at the glass
when you scrape? At what point is the vehicle too covered
to leave be?     I’m spending the evening in
replacing
               buttons on sweaters and knobs on our cabinetry.
In flashes I need
                         the thundersnow’s light to see.
In some vacancy of sound and light I’m carried, fed by
the diction of that intimacy.

Our Amour

Sally Delehant — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:05:12 +0000

We dug you out and hung you.

A flag persuades the banderole,
gives us reason to sing.

We should have minced you,

zipped your fable. You blacked
out bingos, snipped stings,

bought us a glass unicorn. We

took a picture. We handled
emeralds of your strangeness,

left two unwashed in our teeth.

Some things are also and some
are still. You won’t be cut down

from this house. Petulant weevil,

you rain on dust and eat Fridays
of our bravura. Many times

we might or must turn open the table

to your irascible symmetry. Purple
arranges the season,

dedicates your face.