Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Consolamentum
Its sorrows fiton the head of a pinlittle streetits chore-doers
visiblethrough open doorsback courtyardsopening
the world thereunfolds, inheresand makes true
the sound of itanywaythe milkmaid goneto marketthe lady
with her list of ordersbow your headsay you’re sorry into it
the holy personevaporatedinto airbrick on brick
the solariumquietyoung marble-throwersbent to tasks
like countinglike spellingtheir namesor learning Latin
who’s to saywhere knowledgebecomes underhuetests itself
and fadesits fineplain-weave linenaglowthe street
containing umbera little chalkand lead whitethe difference
between thisand a sermonthe levelof doubt
the bentfigurestheir pentimentotelling us
prayer is oneof many waysto workand lovelike regret
is azuritepart creampart lead tin-yellow
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)