Poet
and how
will you feel
knees on the ground
eye level to the void where
you must clamp coerce cut compress coax
the fat resin of each phrase
holding its howl
swallowing its once
voluptuous breath
words braided into
tight-plait wire straining
against cylindric steel
whose
friction-singed sides
blister syntax
scathed flesh of sentences
forming slim scars
as you blow ash
across the page
exhaling into what remains
when you are
done courting fire
your pyrolytic words
transmuted
forge themselves
City Specters
David playing the Pig & Whistle
years younger than I can conjure
My coloratura cords caressing the
listening pews of Old First Church concerts
Licking the whip off Viennese lattes after
Conservatory classes in Tart to Tart klatches
Pushing strollers through Children’s Fairyland
in search of marionettes and Dragon Slides
At Mountain Lake Park my toddlers stomping with
tree bark dinosaurs clutched in juice box fingers
I see them everywhere, sidewalk specters
specters perched on stone
stools in Stow Lake's Chinese Pavilion tending
pinky toe blisters sprung from new sneakers
Two wedding aisles I walked and watched plummet
like the Bay Bridge deck in the Loma Prieta quake
Bruising the packed sand at Ocean Beach dances
our bare heels circling seaweed scarred bonfires
The Highway 17 house where we lost power for a
month and showered under a candled holding tank
Cheap lamb curry before New Year's Eve with the Dead
at Oakland Coliseum when I threw up half the way home
The sushi bar at Ebisu when Kristin's husband said we
looked like two dogs that had tipped over a garbage can
My second trimester when I bled and my girlfriends wept on
speakerphone and also when it stopped—
Lisa Delan’s poetry and prose have been featured in a broad range of literary publications, and she has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. Prominent contemporary composers have set her poems to music for solo voice and piano, and a choral work based on her libretto premieres this year in her adopted home town of San Francisco. When she is not writing, you can find the soprano, an international performer who records for the Pentatone label, singing songs on texts by some of her favorite poets.
January House Literary Journal 
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