Grief Abstracts
Flit and click of the clock. Rim of my wrist in the sum of the light.
By which I. By which. Trill of bird, answer. As might.
A word turns in a thought while a foot’s in the, the literate belly: timed, mea-
sured, kissed.
Mired in rhyme, I rise and am two. A ruse or a wraith. Doubled, I see so. See the
hedge of the sky with the edge of my eye. The face of my kind with my mind.
The doubled woman is a common thing. Nothing more common than this, this
slide of myself from one to two to none. Something to something more to noth-
ing then. And the nothing that my maker becomes contains me as the space does
a bit of air. Flawlessly and firm.
Grief of fire in its final flash and
smolder. The weight of her speaks spark’s brief ire become ash,
become
ruinous food full of dolor. To recall her laughter is to grow older. Fear’s rife in
this filial order. If molded, I’m fodder for air, and I’m colder. Since I lost her I
stored her like ore in my form as if later I’d find her, restore her.
Slow and ready-rising, grief draws similes. Slides over for intrusions of likeness:
berry-bush, clay, beaded wire, bread torn for toddler. Bored grief wards a rose-
bloom by the door. Gravity suffices as thought. Thought’s grafted or scratched,
as a plant or a lens. Sad thought, assiduous in its pursuits, beating devotion into
the body, as a small and forced wary focus.
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About the Author
Julie Carr is the author of Mead: An Epothalamion, and Equivocal. She teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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