A-minor

by Maureen Alsop & Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

Underneath the bounds of the meadow
there are prayers. Should shadows swarm
the pert architectures which are understood
only by the thoughts tallied in the heart, gold
everlasting nimbus. These songs of the sun
are my drunkenness.

They can’t all be opinions—the winds
and the waves, whale song or the fog horn
of some far-off boat. Here and there
etymologically rooted, lines over-lapping,
sun under stone. This is a weird place
to put things in perspective because
you can’t get any distance from them.

A video loop of a waterfall,
in a laundry room. Jonah
only trapped because the whale
is so big, he keeps turning around,
thinking he gets
to the other side, quicker. Whether

I shine today or fall
shrinking like a motherfucker amoeba
between flagstone cracks, the violate lingual
pauper those clouds refuse will fire
trusted waters, liquefy into haze.

Maureen Alsop, Ph.D. is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Mantic, and Apparition Wren, and several chapbooks. Maureen is an associate poetry editor for the online journal Poemeleon and Inlandia: A Literary Journal. She presently leads a creative writing workshop for the Inlandia Institute/Poets & Writers, and the Rooster Moans. Collaborative poems with poet, Joshua Gottlieb-Miller have recently appeared on Verse Daily, Contrary, Inertia, and Switchback. http://www.maureenalsop.com

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller is the winner of the 2012 Indiana Review Poetry Prize. He lives in Madison, WI, where he works as a writing center coordinator and grocer, and volunteers with the Writers in Prisons Project at Oakhill Correctional Institution.