Poems by Liz Waldner

Poems

• Photo (Op/tative) Synthesis Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The general increase in green
  accords in me
  with a growing and specific gravity
  about — it hopes —
  to be undone like a bud.
  
  What kind of   leaf
  or the existence of  bugs
  or the always later rumor
  of   ravishment by wind or water
  don’t interest me.
  
  Sun does.
  
  Come close.
  
  Come slow.
  
  And look me again in the eyes
  as you do.

• Prayer Read Poem Log in to favourite

  If I were in a book it would be the book
  in which some lesser angel bemoans
  the state of my soul
  
  and is comforted for it
  and is corrected for it
  
  by some greater angel who knows
  as the reader knows that it is not one’s soul
  that suffers the indignities of ignobility:
  the inability to curb the petty smallness
  of spirit, ungladness in the company
  of bureaucrats, anger’s decay,
  
  in the sense that my soul itself cannot be
  harmed nor tarnished though it can witness
  my sorrow on finding that illness alters me
  from the self I thought I’d more or less known.
  
  What can one do about one’s nature?
  
  I look at the spider that’s finally
  restrung its great wheel away from the door.
  
  I’d like to close the door, go away,
  leaving the spider be.
  
  I’d like to preclude the possibility
  of angel, as of prey.

• Sacramento O No Read Poem Log in to favourite

  An asparagus eating contest—
  I thought I’d misheard.
  
  Downstairs the rude old man
  lays tile, makesdemasiadonoise.
  
  I fell asleep at last around 5:30am
  and he woke me an hour later or so:
  it is better I don’t look
  at the clock.
  
  By this means
  I clock my progress: I know now
  it is sometimes better not to
  know.
  
  I have midnight equilibrium
  but it is gone by 3am.
  
  Thank you forCloud of Sparrows,
  man who wrote it.
  
  I read all night.
  
  Thank you for the pen from Iran, Kamyar.
  
  Its myriad stars have just run out of ink
  eleven years on.
  
  Thank you, sun, for leaf shadows
  on horrible carpet in horrible box
  I live in and for tree by which I mean
  what’s living.
  
  I think of the gardens
  I planted and left.
  
  I think of beets,
  of beans and asparagus.
  
  Then
  on the radio, hear the contest.
  
  The noise of ten lanes of traffic
  does not cancel the consolation
  of seeing the wind
  in the sweetgum leaves.
  
  The experience of this
  is my food and my sleep.
  
  As at some strange customs,
  I declare.

• Semblance: Screens Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A moth lies open and lies
  like an old bleached beech leaf,
  a lean-to between window frame and sill.
  
  Its death protects a collection of tinier deaths
  and other dirts beneath.
  
  Although the white paint is water-stained,
  on it death is dirt, and hapless.
  
  The just-severed tiger lily
  is drinking its glass of water, I hope.
  
  This hope is sere.
  
  This hope is severe.
  
  What you ruin ruins you, too
  and so you hope for favor.
  
  I mean I do.
  
  The underside of a ladybug
  wanders the window.
  
  I wander
  the continent, my undercarriage not as evident,
  so go more perilously, it seems to me.
  
  But I am only me; to you it seems clear
  I mean to disappear, and am mean
  and project on you some ancient fear.
  
  If I were a bug, I hope I wouldn’t be
  this giant winged thing, spindly like a crane fly,
  skinny-legged like me, kissing the cold ceiling,
  fumbling for the face of the other, seeking.
  
  It came in with me last night when I turned on the light.
  
  I lay awake, afraid it would touch my face.
  
  It wants out.
  
  I want out, too.
  
  I thought you a way through.
  
  Arms wide for wings,
  your suffering mine, twinned.
  
  Screen.
  
  Your unbelief drives me in,
  doubt for dirt, white sheet for sill—
  You don’t stay other enough or still
  enough to be likened to.

• Trust Read Poem Log in to favourite

  If   I would be walking down the road
  you told me to imagine and I would and find
  a diner kind of   teacup sitting on its saucer
  in the middle then I would feel so good
  in my life that is just like mine
  I would walk right up and look into my face
  eclipsing the sky in the tea in the cup
  and say, “Thank you, I have enjoyed
  imagining all this.
  
  ”

• When I Was In Love and Out of All Else Read Poem Log in to favourite

  “It must be awful,” she said to the dog locked in it
  as she left the kitchen that wasn’t hers, closing its door,
  to head up the stairs with every good thing she could find
  to eat in her arms
  
  (to eat in her arms—O Katherine!)
  
  “not to have any arms.
  
  ”