Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Two Poems by Lisa Fink

Her Disco [8]

These are many: horn-shaped,

fan-shaped, whirr-shaped.

Little chambered heart-husks

with spirals that go down.

These spiral, these wind:

spiny jewel box, lace & apple

with elbows like serifs,

tulip, cone, bonnet to soft

mollusk-heart, whelk,

augur that drills into sand-hut,

lion’s paw, egg cockle, angel

& turkey wings,

sunray venus,

bleeding tooth,

pear, baby’s ear

creased & hardened;

paper fig,

cherub-cheeked

& like the fleet moments after

waking.

Each a coil in nested crystal,

put these up to your ear,


hear the sounds

of dream—some call it the sea.


Her Disco [9]

The sea-shell bears the spiral,

each like a moon

in its own phase

or fragment, a husk

of intoxicated eye

pulls us into, gets us drunk,

& we weep for we are powerless

like a horn, curved & protean.

Small wind on water, nested

kingdom of stars.

Call her name:

Jar of Myrtle, Cup of Wild-almond,

Weather-vane, & Healing-of-the-nations.

Go, worm; go, mantis,

up leaf-spire up

in your upsy way.


Lisa Fink's poems will appear in a chapbook titled Her Disco due out in May 2012 from
Dancing Girl Press. There are space breaks in the above poems that got lost when I pasted in the poems, I'm sorry to say. Currently completing her MFA at the University of Virginia, she is a former student of mine. Buy the chapbook when it comes out!

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