Issue 42 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

y Mary Zoo
Twin
selected poems
Of all the street's windows, only yours dreams.
Barely twenty the child you were
clitnbed the spiral staircase toward the moon
seeking ocean, its twisting
scorched by moonlight.
You too felt the pull of it,
that heavy seed filled with time.
Waves dragged in your ear,
chained, unchained, the slow war
flowing froin some eternal center.
A future waiting to be yours
lay beyond a bridge of stars.
You watched them pass,
the long animal shadows of youth,
partner to the dancing coin
that rose and spun and would not fall.
Candle
Deep in its mantle,
the arrow that rises
from the cliff
of its own cutting
descends through
flesh and fat,
climbing the hungry
root whose flame
feeds the round
light that eats
its way up.