Read the introduction by guest editor Sawako Nakayasu.
The Dress I Wrote Backwards
She slipped into time’s knot curled up
She slept in her arms false or true
She dynamic twin palms
trims the stubborn trees
unpleats sun from sharp edges
builds a reflex into knots moving past abstraction
into liquid
She backwards in a dress
one by one between
a figure to think a figurine
She was troubled by many
naming them elements carbon or pulse
She sent balloons into the great
the blue-headed year
and being economical
pairs together in frames the triple
one block of ticking as she
the parallel expert of night
cuts her own hands
how prosody swallows
before you go
and thinks her cash in streaks
joining simple laws to the wind
She what relates to a graph
is omnipresent maximal
coming to a standstill in wood
She heavy traffic having driven
around the end of the edge of
the pursuit of formal steam
She glimpses artists of the moment
painting the pelvis the ulna the remnants
the red gestures in single moments that bend
in the innermost of schools
the combinations figure themselves
as in epics or symphonic sheets
She watching from the inside
what utopia loves in utopia
milk in her hair
and ankles
The Age of Speculation
Drift is choice
This year ghosts meander
Something waits
inside love letters
something remembers
its many stones
In counterpanes you push against
what is useful in what is new
but what remains is either surprise
a patterned display
for example in the delicate
reader of trees who admits nothing
The actualities are drawn like bruises
the way genius will crash into lanterns
or simply windows
in numbered stripes on hillsides
Figurine
Take me to your gall
assay this airy paper
deep cuts
in an empty shell
Or should we say
paper first
then dream later
A fine orb is a secret
in a single climber
bombardments
from the ether
ferocious dream cats
Whistler’s Latin falling
from earth to apple
Queues
We have chosen to be
to live with effort
The water inside waits
is prime six in shadow
As you can see
the matter is
where a blue span opens
a book in George Herbert’s
book in March
The issue is sound
a pale clouded collector
parliament of arms
Leaflets
Things in this poem include
eggs murmurs
keys and cargo or letters
in a bowl never sent
Single zeros will cave
among the shy
as people pour into shapes
foam or velvet edges
voluntary crescents
shouting for joy
repeating scarlet openly
Juliana Leslie lives in Santa Cruz, CA. She is the author of More Radiant Signal (Letter Machine Editions, 2010) and Green Is for World, a 2011 National Poetry Series Selection forthcoming from Coffee House Press in late 2012.