Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
And a Red Mouth
for Arshile Gorky
Four bedded down in woods fourand us at the window
aware of what’s unaware of usthree count a fourth
a shapehidden past the ear of who
we can’t saywhat their relationship
each to the other we can’tour own or severally
to God insidebrush on canvas
his small way of abstractlyrecalling fields
washing stonesof poplar leaf sirs
in orchard windto color what can’t
its beauty conveycrane our necks
to hear itbed ourselves into all
that would seek cold windsArshile recalling
his earlier namesthe holy tree
from which hungstrips of clothing
a pilgrim’s practicemarked genocide-pure
four bedded downsleep-dozingif we let them
if we let itdarkness comes
stitched in yellowand a red mouth
Carol Ann Davis is the author of the poetry collections Psalm (Tupelo Press, 2007) and Atlas Hour (Tupelo, 2011) and a forthcoming essay collection, The Nail in the Tree: On Art, Violence, and Parenting (Tupelo, 2019). Her work has been published in The Georgia Review, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. An NEA fellow and finalist for a National Magazine Award, she is professor of English at Fairfield University, where she is founding director of Poetry in Communities, an initiative that brings writing workshops to communities hit by sudden or systemic violence. She lives in Newtown, Connecticut. (updated 4/2019)