Such and Such a Time at Such and Such a Palace
The lack of a single-word infinitive
in our language is what is killing me
this morning
A single word for all
infinitives is what God is doing tonight
This is just one of many acts
to have passed through the garden
Previously on this show they put
a peacock back together wrong
after its demise
Something
there was in the syntax
Poor bird could feel it in his bones
Copyright @ 2014 by Heather Christle. Used with permission of the author.
“Sometimes (often), when I sit down to write, I become deeply conscious of all the other words/ideas/minds/bodies that have inhabited the space before me. In this poem I deal with that awareness by abandoning myself and god to give a brief (incomplete, inaccurate) recap of poetry thus far, as if it were a television show starring Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and a peacock.”
—Heather Christle
Heather Christle
Heather Christle is the author of The Crying Book (Catapult, 2019) as well as four poetry collections, including Heliopause (Wesleyan University Press, 2015) and What Is Amazing (Wesleyan University Press, 2012). She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Emory University and lives in Decatur, Georgia.