from GHAZALS
35/

Rivulets descend across the place where walking thins
The thickness that we thought was impenetrable.

A deeper lengthening of time involves a stretch of
The decadent hollow-seeming space of afterthought.

Hearing the color blue is not the same as
Remembering blue sounding superballads.

Phosphorescences of gardens are
Appeasing longing for the white plum.

Gentle texture of a mist arises above
The pedantic ocean waves in aquamarine rows.

The erupting silence of the stagnant garden
Turns neutral in meditation, not separate.

What reflex spurns unison when music
Sounds an arpeggio flinging goosebumps?

Hermetically sealed windows keep out air and
Sand in place resisting damages once accrued.

Across dispassionate division problems
Mathematics weeps for subtraction’s loss.

The present passed over the future
Sans graphic pressure, yet with focus.

Unlabeled grief secures habitual discomfort
On the rubber tongue-speak of those who are unsorry.
 
Rhetoric nestles into place in the sentence
Pronouncing guilt and its full accompaniment.

Look at willow then at grass across the park
Its fortitude and its measure in the sun.

You’re frothing in my head, clangorous as bells you
Trawl through makeshift winter everywhere I go.

Semicolons almost finish off the frame around
The foreseen attributes of a complete sentence

Michelle Greenblatt is the new co-poetry editor of AND PER SE AND. Her first book, brain:storm, was released this January by anabasis press. Her second book, ASHES AND SEEDS, will also be released this year by BlazeVOX.

Sheila E. Murphy's most recent book is CONTINUATIONS with Douglas Barbour (from The University of Alberta Press). Murphy was trained as a flutist, and has been actively writing and publishing for many years. Her visual poetry has also appeared in numerous exhibitions. Her home is in Phoenix.

 
Copyright © 2006 by Michelle Greenblatt and Sheila E. Murphy, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the authors.