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Song for Future Books

The book is made of glass and I look 
through it and see more books. 

Many glass books.

Is someone speaking?

     A muffled voice is telling me 
to make soup which I think 
means I am loved. 

What other kind of cup 
fills itself? 

Can there be a cup of cup?

A cup of itself?

Outside a black squirrel has wiggled 
to the end 
of a very skinny branch. 

When the squirrel breathes
the whole tree shakes,

as if the squirrel were the soul
of the tree.

Have you ever felt like 
such a tree?

Not sayin’ 
I have.

Joanna Fuhrman is a graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program. She is the author of six books of poetry: To a New Era (Hanging Loose Press, 2021); The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press 2015); Pageant (Alice James Books 2009); Moraine (Hanging Loose Press 2006); Ugh Ugh Ocean (Hanging Loose Press 2006); and Freud in Brooklyn (Hanging Loose Press 2000).

Themes

About this Poem

"In the spring and summer of 2013, I was trying to write a series of short lyrics that merged observation and dreams. Each little poem would be dated and titled with a headline from the day's news. As often happens with poetry, my concept was hurting the integrity of the poems, so I needed to go back and change the titles of the poems—this one was originally called 'Fashion Spread with Women Dressed as Suicidal Women Writers Draws Ire.'"

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More by this poet

Not Here, Exactly

I found your letter
in the pocket

of a borrowed goat.

It showed me
the way—

small as an eye.

One mountain tried
to taste another,

then spit it out.

Your letter called
all the other letters

“friends.”

You too were
my friend,

soft as a melting
or melted nail.

Dear little cage,
dark plum.

Joanna Fuhrman

2015

Trigger Guard

Everyone I ever loved is standing 
on a platform with a gun. 

In the cartoon version, a flag pops 
with the word ‘bang.’

In the soap opera version, 
my face turns the color of merlot. 

In the haiku version, 
metal gleams in the narrow shadow.

In the Republican version, 
two guns wrap themselves in a single flag.

In the Langpo version.
idolatry yips yaps paradigm the.

Joanna Fuhrman

2010

Architecture Moraine

A woman builds a house out of birds’ cries and cries
all the time within it. The man she had wanted says,

“I am looking for a woman who is crying, but can’t
tell if anyone is crying inside that house’s outer

crying.” So she builds another house; this time, tears
for bricks, and cries as loud as she can within it.

Still he can’t hear her because the house’s
rectangular tears are too dazzlingly beautiful

to hear within. At this point, they both should be
laughing. The ceiling is neither of their mouths,

Joanna Fuhrman

2006

Poems

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Song for Future Books

More by this poet

Not Here, Exactly

Trigger Guard

Architecture Moraine

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