“Cold dark deep and absolutely clear”
— Elizabeth Bishop, “At the Fishhouses”
The water a sheet of beat tin, it is a June song
in March, ripples for welcome. Army and gray
colors tell us why the season resists the call
of our bodies; displayed on the nightstand, the interior
brave replica of summer, stilted
in daguerreotype, printed gauzily. The white light
needed over our shoulders to see the ream, the functioning
slide. The bed is yellow—a blushing pastel paper
out of context in the hoarfrost season. Even
the white bell doilies breathe in dust
from the half-light time. Not entirely shade
but clear gray out across the ledge
and many measures more, a little water flits
between a split-trunk tree. It is
what we imagine June to be: a sliver
of wet movement, an arc that asks for colors
to ice it hotly and shake the shake of gray.
—
This selection comes from Sandy Marchetti’s book A Detail in the Landscape, available from Eating Dog Press. Purchase your copy here!
Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Gold Wake Press. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, in 2014, and her chapbook, The Canopy, is available from MWC Press. Sandy also won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.
Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.
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