Skip to content

   Vastness of dusk, after a day -

        what is a person? Too late

to ask this now. The court has ruled

   a corporation is a person.

Persons used to be called souls.

   On the avenue, a lucky person

stands in a convenience store

   scratching powder from his ticket -

silver flecks fall from his thumbs

  to galaxies below.

                    Deep in the night

    a trough of chaos forms;

your lover's body stops it every time.

  Meteors of the season over minnows

in the creek with two kinds of crayfish,

    tiny mouths & claws

      - nervous, perfect, perfect

life - the flesh of a dreamer,

  facing the wall -

   Around each word you're reading

there spins the unknowable flame.

      When you wake, a style

 of world shakes free

   from the dream. It doesn't stop

      when you go out;

it doesn't stop when you come back

    as you were meant to-

In the Evening of the Search

Brenda Hillman

More from
Poem of the Week

Mira Rosenthal

Features

translated from the Polish written by
Tomasz Różycki
Russell Thornton

Letters