Icarus After

 

Icarus After

 

When grief strikes in the house,
open the sea Ariel protects,
stitch glowworms in book spines,
give an ear to Thelonius, a sparrow
in your lap.  Among the city’s
mannequins, someone touches your coat,
and a leaf falls on a park bench,
ending autumn early.  In your house
with the horse’s exposed anatomy,
a chestnut-flamed glass on the table,
the East River is here, lending her
veil to your ship in the fog.
What the twilight does not say
you have said with surgical ease:
the spangled scars we wear
are scratches on the landing.

Ishion Hutchinson

Author: Ishion Hutchinson

Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art and teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University. 

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