This week, as Guest Author, I will be spotlighting innovative work by women poets in the form of new writing and review-essays. Today I'm delighted to share a poem by Lisa Olstein. Lisa Olstein is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, LATE EMPIRE (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). PAIN STUDIES, a book of lyric nonfiction, is forthcoming in 2020. Recipient of a Hayden Carruth Award, Pushcart Prize, Lannan Writing Residency, and Sustainable Arts Foundation Promise Award, she is a member of the poetry faculty for the University of Texas at Austin’s New Writers Project and Michener Center for Writers. Happy summer, and enjoy!
A New Poem by Lisa Olstein
SOFT TARGET
I’d rather not walk through a lightning storm
to see you, but that’s just the weather.
Last night something struck out so suddenly
from deep inside me, arriving it seemed to flee:
a new feeling, a sudden realization, ancient
knowledge forged in the chemical present.
I meant to say soul, soul is where from, once
forged, it fled, bringing its news of another place
but it felt silly to say so. Anyway, a little death
as coyly in literature they say was in play
and outside the darkened room, too, explosions,
but not the good kind. You see what I did there?
By morning, I’d thought it would’ve died down
but it hasn’t: angry alto monks, darkest echoes.
I’m wearing my best boots for the occasion.
Maybe it’s useless to carry this umbrella,
maybe worse. Turbulence becomes you,
becomes me, erases the difference, the distance
by which we measure. I see I’ve played this
all wrong, waiting, rushing, talking, still talking
when silence is the only place we might meet.
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