By Hannah VanderHart
Flourish, Fall 2011
little
of material objects:
children, cats,
snowflakes
of portions of space:
‘see the lytel pearl
in the oyster’s grey mouth’
of smallness,
of opposition to greatness,
overlookable
even a great thing
reducible,
‘be∙littled’
little rock by the sea,
little edge it keeps,
parapet in a child’s castle
how you resist the fury
of the waves,
little body
used to designate animals
and vegetable varieties
in a genus shared
by larger beings:
little egret, little owl,
little daisy (‘daysye’)
in collocation:
little brother, younger,
endearment implied.
Crows
Who am I and what does it mean to have
no ear to hear the bells with, and yet to nod
at morning, evening, noon—as though we are
responsive to each other, smooth and stable
in our movements. Even the trees tremble
at such assumptions of the turning world
and spirit; five crows in a lawn this morning,
I can be like them, dark and picking at the earth,
ever after sustenance, shining feathers driven
by subsistence, never knowing what will make
them fly again, but black eyes all aware.
Hannah VanderHart lives by the Severn River in Annapolis, MD. She has her MFA from George Mason University, and is currently a graduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where she is a second-year fellow at The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. She has poetry published and forthcoming in Rock & Sling, 1110, the St Katherine Review, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere.
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