· the cultural society · » Shannon Tharp

Grand Canyon

Shannon Tharp — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:59:57 +0000

From space, a ragged
scar. Someone’s

named it beautiful —
Most Beautiful —

and its history’s clear,
though the picture’s

distant. Five hundred
miles away, the moon

is a hatchet of silver,
prepared to slip into

whatever earth needs
cutting. Five hundred

miles away, the stars
are locked in dark, are

breaking with us as
we sleep, breathe, or

can’t. You’re in my
heart; I’m in your

hand. This world —
glass upon inversion —

is a mirror in which
greater figures exist,

in which, waiting,
they remain.

Acts of Elision

Shannon Tharp — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:59:41 +0000

You say we’re older. The future’s
no joke. Some days are sufficient
in their dull, real hurt, while others

are enough to make us wonder
at every semblance glancing
out from between the countless trees

in this adumbrated forest.
How many acts of elision
does it take to figure a light?

The way you hold me now is not
inconsequential, though it could
be said that I might have never

needed you. Prior to breathing,
I was blind, apart; you were
always you, and so, inwardly,

loved. Measurable were the days
I’d been touched or heard my name said
well, if ever. Before, little

more than wind and rain, dim static
extinguished with a turn. Steady
now (the accident’s awhile back),

your hands affirm the long-noiseless
truth: I remember nothing save
for you walking into a room.

June

Shannon Tharp — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:59:23 +0000

Beauty’s too easy
when routine
bites

hard;
the ocean’s
a fucking bore.

Where’s that
Winterlike
light

when
it’s wanted,
light promising

only

snow.

-

No
reason
but in echoes,

bottles
on the floor.

Those
are sirens
behind me.

And it’s
like you said —
would’ve
turned
up

dead
in a car.

Shannon Tharp Reading

Shannon Tharp — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:17:50 +0000

State Line

Shannon Tharp — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:42 +0000

A hasty graveyard’s makeshift
fence, boarded houses and
token snow, stained pavement
where a carcass bled, covered horses
with no place to go, an old barn
slowly collapsing between refineries
and grains, a rare bridge among infinite
hills, and one last bird (and another) through
your brain, stalled boxcars and broken
jukeboxes, a field cut within an inch
of its dirt—like so—and railroad
parallel singed crops, and wind
winding across the highway
with the look of dry ice
in a place no worse than your earth.

Within Reason

Shannon Tharp — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:31 +0000

Woke voiceless, wanting
to sing in the city
where people say rain
spells weather, where
one goes gray with
waiting. I used to think
to find my way around;
now I go braving
anything that I can’t
think to see. It’s hard to
risk another, whatever
form you take. Things
go luminous (within
reason) without light.

Steady, Less and Less

Shannon Tharp — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:00:18 +0000

The day flickers before us in a thicked-up throb
of questions. What of birds and the peculiarity
of flight — a pattern by which to scratch

existence. What of me and the inexpense of
sitting in a field with your face
to any nameable thing.

When simply the having is enough
will you ask, “How are you
breathing, my girl?”

An Edge

Shannon Tharp — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:00:06 +0000

Patience now’s
a more substantive

shadow, as in
waves changing

in the dark. There’s
an echo here, the ghost

of which is something
like a voice that grows

as it’s eroded. What
remains is listening’s

trace, a struggle
for another pattern;

a growing into
need, want;

a process to not
remember. One

learns this ground
through flashes of

doubt — thought’s
only matter.

Northerly

Shannon Tharp — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:00:01 +0000

In conditions less
than perfect,
what I make out through

rain — happening a-
gain in a
slow diagonal —

white hearse, green graveyard,
little else
save for what isn’t

To Earth

Shannon Tharp — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:00:43 +0000

No way
into your face,

just a flame to be
at home in,

and so I come
to understand

cold. Far away,
slowly, shapes

take the place
of snow, until

even weather
appears to be

dead. What late
thought, what

careful error —
that hearing in you

spares me.