Dan Giancola
Neighbor
I see her now and again:
at the curb across the asphalt
chasm where she comes
to fetch her can and yak
about the heat, the wind, the rain,
her laugh scraping the air
like a coal shovel
or sitting her mower
to husband her lawn,
proud and a tad frightened
(the girl in her face
astride her first pony),
going to seed
in this dance with the grass.
Between mows
she filches our circular, leaves
its exhausted prophylactic flapping,
roots through our business,
herds the shadows
to their pens of shade.
Her kids visit like comets.
Today she's riding.
Her usual Euclidean grid
wobbles into laps that drift
to the center of zero.
A swallow forks insects
that rise from the swath.
Darkness drives her indoors.
Widowed by her hearing
she cranks polkas like a teen,
her lamps burning until dawn.
She nods off in a chair,
dew oiling the grass.
Each blade knives through her
toward the unmovable stars.
at the curb across the asphalt
chasm where she comes
to fetch her can and yak
about the heat, the wind, the rain,
her laugh scraping the air
like a coal shovel
or sitting her mower
to husband her lawn,
proud and a tad frightened
(the girl in her face
astride her first pony),
going to seed
in this dance with the grass.
Between mows
she filches our circular, leaves
its exhausted prophylactic flapping,
roots through our business,
herds the shadows
to their pens of shade.
Her kids visit like comets.
Today she's riding.
Her usual Euclidean grid
wobbles into laps that drift
to the center of zero.
A swallow forks insects
that rise from the swath.
Darkness drives her indoors.
Widowed by her hearing
she cranks polkas like a teen,
her lamps burning until dawn.
She nods off in a chair,
dew oiling the grass.
Each blade knives through her
toward the unmovable stars.
Page(s) 10
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The