Sonnet [Laughing below, the unimagined room]

Karen Volkman

Laughing below, the unimagined room
in unimagined mouths, a turning mood
speaking itself the way a fulling should
overspilling into something's dome,

some moment's edging over into bloom.
What is a happening but conscious cloud
seeking its edge in a wound or word
pellucidity describing term

as boundary, body, violated bourne
no sounding center, circumscription turn.
Mother of mirrors, angel of the acts,

do all the sighing breathing clicking wilds
summon the same blue breadth the sense subtracts,
the star suborning in its ruptured fields.

Labor as a Tulip

Labor as a tulip
arrays its flame, nu
form, as the bulb-star,
interred, divines its ore

surging the gulf
rooting it into
appalled memento
pulsing will.

Leaf-blades score the heap.
Other wounds—penetralia—
other worlds, cries, far.
Filaments, simples

emblazoning the rei,
rebus of grief.
Unslumbering terra
premising her kill.

Karen Volkman

2014

Sonnet [Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,]

Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,
the earth, blue egg, in its seeping shell
dispensing damage like a hollow hell
inchling weeping for a minor sea

ticking its tidelets, x and y and z.
The blue beneficence we call and spell
and call blue heaven, the whiteblue well
of constant water, deepening a thee,

a thou and who, touching every what—
and in the or, a shudder in the cut—
and that you are, blue mirror, only stare

bluest blankness, whether in the where,
sheen that bleeds blue beauty we are taught
drowns and booms and vowels.  I will not.

Karen Volkman

2008

Poems

Sonnet [Laughing below, the unimagined room]

More by this poet

Labor as a Tulip

Sonnet [The pearl of interval] (audio only)

Sonnet [Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,]

Poems

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Sonnet [Laughing below, the unimagined room]

More by this poet

Labor as a Tulip

Sonnet [The pearl of interval] (audio only)

Sonnet [Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,]

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