Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Not Night
Cottonwoods bring down
the sun, suck the sky bone-blue,
then load the light
inside sapwood
and stones. Now the way
is lit for mink, barred owls, those
who eat the weak by dark.
The nude horizon gleams
like gutted fish.
Way up there dark
plum clouds push the sopped
air down, the prairie
on edge while sheet lightning writhes,
breaking slightly
free of the sky . . .
Watch the dogs’ noses up,
the wind getting raw
and blue. Out there the river,
the one that never ends,
scrolls to the west, quartering off
toward where the Dakotas
reside; look: nothing. Then,
nothing. Hey, have
a seat if you want to see
this long night-
fall goddamn it, I said
don’t blink or you’ll miss it, over
here, I said,
it’s all but dark.
Mark Conway’s first book, Any Holy City (Silverfish Review Press, 2005) was recently shortlisted for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. His poem in AGNI 67 is from a new manuscript entitled “Dreaming Man, Face Down.” (updated 5/2008)