Excerpt from Is by Emily Vogel

1965

This poem appears in our Fall 2013 Print Issue 23.
The full issue is available for download in high quality digital format here, or can be purchased for Kindle here.
 
An infant is a feeling like a cornfield in October,
in a dome of silence, hued with fiery light.

I’ve seen visions such as this

through car windows, swiftly passing.

A husband is built for the coldest winter.

He is a deep song heard through a ceiling.

He is a dream that has difficulty recalling itself.

A poet is stupid like an ape.

A poet is a painting that hangs cockeyed on a wall.

A mother is round, like any object.
Her body is made to twist like pain,
her spirit to laugh and rejoice

like April rivers.
 
Emily VogelEMILY VOGEL’s poetry has been published in numerous journals, most recently in Tiferet, Lyrelyre, Maggy, Lips,The San Pedro River Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Comstock Review, [Spaces}, and The Journal of New Jersey Poets. She has published five chapbooks: most recently Digressions on God (Main Street Rag, author’s choice series, 2012). The Philosopher’s Wife, a full-length collection, was published in 2011 (Chester River Press). She has work forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Omniverse, and 2 Bridges Review. Recently, she collaborated with her husband, Joe Weil, on a book of poetry, West of Home, which has been published by Blast Press. She is the poetry editor of the online journal Ragazine, and teaches writing at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College.
 
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