like nothing else in tense, ése
               erasure of "Anecdote of the Jar," by Wallace Stevens
Vickie Vértiz

 

 

 

I(‘m) a dominó, every here

 

gray and bare

 

not bird or bush

 

 

I plait,

 

ill, ma(‘)

 

round and up

 

és(a) ros(a) esta rota

 

, p_to

 

(s)he’s lovely

 

(a) long wild wound

 

the wound, the ground

 

a tall potion

 

 

I laced a tense, see

 

the wild es sí

 

and round it was

 

up, on a hill

 

(a) long wild wound

 

I’ll rose up and raw around

 

no longer wound, f(oo’)

 

not a bird or brush

 

like nothing else in tense, ése

 

 

~~~~~

Vickie Vértiz was selected by Natalie Diaz for the 2016 Summer Residency at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Tucson. A new Macondo Fellow, her second book, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut will be published by the Camino Del Sol Series, in the fall of 2017.