Sherry Chandler » 2005 » April » 11
Elaine Palencia is the author of two short story collections from University of Missouri Press – Small Caucasian Woman and Brier Country: Stories of Blue Valley – and two poetry collections from Grex Press – Taking the Train and The Dailiness of It. The poem below, “The Nonagenarian’s Back,” is from Pegasus Prize Poems Issue 2004. It won both the KSPS Grand Prix and the Poet Laureate’s Prize (best of the winners).
The Nonagenarian’s Back
her face a winter-bruised apple
forgotten under a hedge,
her eyes rain-puddled,
her nose spongy with pores,
her hands black with gnarled rivers,
her mind’s villages cut off
each
from
each
by deepening valleys,
oh but regard her back
rounded into a foetal curl
chatoyant as moonstones,
blue lights whispering in a white field
smooth as a baby’s cheek,
soft as boiled custard,
boneless as abalone,
bridge of silky snow over which animal
will walk to become mineral
This post was written by sherry
Good on Barney Frank; he has impressed me lately, although my only previous knowledge of him was through...
