More Table Alphabetical

I wanted to post a few more poems in a different register from Pattie McCarthy's book, just to give readers a better sense of her range.

Here's a short little number in four parts for Jenn McCreary:

fionn: a pearl on your eye

1. there is a space large
enough if you make
yourself very
small, a glass hour,
noon—smells of sleep
& breath, a pilcrow scorched bright.
the floodgate I see you
through or do not.
most that increases is needless, given
a light surface, growing thing,
given the skin with which
to touch, blood has a life
expectancy of two months, woe unto you,
poor bella—your hair will become
the shoes of your father's enemies.

2. a pearl on your eye : you are
a finely made thing. when it begins
to snow harder—trees, houses, other
objects seem to recede into the distance.
I know less now
that I am no longer sleepless. it's a trick, this
shift from a blank to witness : a diacritical mark,
an accent slip in emphasis.

3. this is how it should begin in a glass hour.
you are putting two words
together fair-haired & floodgated.
this is how it should begin in coarse
grass cut away & set alight, a prefix
fixed & finely made.

4. haar, snow-dazzle, & fabric softener.
easternly & keen, as with flour, oyer
& terminer—the child is a flexible
cipher, again again. the child is a flexible cipher.