Beth Bretl
Three Poems
Examination On The Summer Of 2005 When There Was Little Hay To Be Had
FIGURE 1: The Real Fabrication Of The Story Of My Life As If It Were Me
The Real Fabrication† Of The Story Of My Life‡ As If§ It Were Me |
*slur = crow flies ‡ she says, yes, the rain is coming so you will remember
† remind me of South Dakota, we pulled off and the clouds so quickly |
FIGURE 2: How It Is I Cannot Say You
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FIGURE 3: The Nation-State Moving Successfully Forward
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Examination On The Summer Of 2005 When There Was Little Hay To Be Had
Q. in mornings shaving of light
A. this boy’s touch makes the leaves translucent
Q. many reveals personation and narrator
A. once alluded
Q. partita
A. blue you can move across the fingerboard—
A. by string you mean page?
Q. what faculty of body
A. slight willows through an afternoon’s reach
A. show the mind’s center of attention
Q. july 2nd
A. we go to memory
Q. all the real living/
A. scuttle of wings overhead: pantomimic thought
Q. in her dream the bird’s color is lost?
A. the boy again
Q. obsolete
A. afterbirth near the gate
Q. a certain thickness of oppression
A. sky presses!
A. her horse by the white pine
Q. acknowledge an insufficiency
A. we never could
A. there on the cement slab, your hula hoop
1. Pause
if my hand precedes
itself cited there
against the light
patina of forethought
might you suspend
subsequent
2. Touch
she says if she were
a writer, she would
narrate Monopoly dog’s
life, he would be surprised
by his extensive vocabulary,
say, “Monopoly car’s been
spinning his wheels
all this time”
3. Inflection
grass plots
weighted into darkness
that hours ago
well, that all
slightly
O. shrugs her mind
against a subject
I was just about
Beth Bretl teaches writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Aufgabe, Free Verse, North American Review and American Book Review. She is currently working on translations and collaborative writing projects.