It

it is almost at the harbor when we strike a precarious
         balance on the brink of a surface we call cliff
and then again we play it safe and settle                inland
         and wait for it        initially        in its wake                 a bit
                              of an idea scribbled into waves cracks
us open a slit       it’s like we’re paper           it’s that easy
to tear into us       in time         after our little pas de deux
         with denial even its vapor
                  can obliterate us    it’s a catalyst for remembering
at last every repressed memory of what maybe
                           hasn’t happened yet                      it bids us
                       to travel as if over hills and seas to a different
         self so we aren’t at home and that’s how we know
what we felt before           it’s in the itinerant glow
                  in the transformative oh           the way the smoke
proposes at once to several shades of gray and brick
                      it’s common sense            we insist           to believe
         in a shared reality         that reiterative         imitable
systematic illusion of certainty that’s only the tip
                                         but it’s not a foregone conclusion
                in anyone’s prefrontal cortex that curiosity actually
  is precarious a risk akin to the contrary    and comparing ships
                  we arrive in the end          with this         it isn’t
         really like anything           it’s neither in the least a harbor
                           nor even a brink            but is everything it is
estranged from anything but the exiled
                                         and for a while we welcome it

ξ

As Is

what if art makes more sense                         of us than we can
    of it                      if we’re thirsty it’s a sticky wicket to picture
or ponder the arc of the daily
                   covenant with what we mean         flashing us
     its moue                  we see what we want to see
                                                  or maybe we want what we see
we see         for a while in the wilderness out yonder beyond
     the hanging gardens          we fold into the valley
   like a language for green fire         or scorched earth
              for the edges we strike between the particulates
and any way we can                         we walk into the difference
  between a thought and a day           hey there’s no need now
         to get petulant if it’s mostly a moot path
                  alas      caught in a branch              the rusted
  rigmarole of memory spends itself
                  free associating             dreaming its mossy dreams
of sticks and stones                if we’re lucky we’ll go home
         eventually              but what if the after image we catch
  is the nexus of everything
          that came before          if it’s another experiment
in these woods of disorder and joy
                                                 who cares if we don’t find water
                           if we do find wine



ξ

Alice B. Fogel is the former New Hampshire poet laureate. Her latest book is A Doubtful House. Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” which won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature and the 2016 NH Literary Award in Poetry. Her third book, Be That Empty, was a national poetry bestseller. Fogel is also the author of Strange Terrain, a book on how to appreciate poetry without necessarily “getting” it. Nominated for Best of the Net and ten times for the Pushcart, she has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, Spillway, Hotel Amerika, The Inflectionist, and DIAGRAM.