Meadow

Inside the well-bordered meadow, stranger,
grief shook its leaves
just far enough to see
a disappearing figure on the fringes
in the blue valley, the only
body moving.
Pink slit of sky after a rainstorm,
legs of an idling animal through the barn door
adjacent. We meandered, a spirited glance away
notched in the hedges, engraver
memory, you with your lush breath
breathe the wind through me
as one terrain changes into another
indiscernibly, after devastation.
The lettering that lived in you
a single storm of wishing. The time it took
to wipe the scrim clean.
I have traded one silence for another,
and now it passes
from one hand to the other.

from Your every image (un)tethered

And would you rather have filled the starlight

with other aims? Black bridle across the throat,

I/we who are bonded together, I

as you, You in the middle of me, & so


clawed my way over the tide

gray-green seaweed

sore on the rock

speckles, a pulse away from nothing


[ ]

without expression I rally towards the day’s banks

calloused and quartered, re-mark, enjoin it

at the edge of seeing. The stream moves on,

slate planks fitting squarely together

until somebody kneels over and weeps at its edge.

exit the ages

carrying a broken collar -


stoic in the lapse, being nothing more

than what I meant to say –


spurred on, rode the great length of the wave

flirting with it,                           inflexion

cupping the blank truth of a moment’s

notice –  a two-sided note  :

And should you manage to drink the blackout

horizon - stepping up to the quell, leap of the last wave-

crest, battered heft left of heaven,

- a knife on the table upturned,

up into the air it slices

to find your absent body—

pitched like the blind, forever facing

the wind mimicking

the hawk -

dearest red deer

wrenching the heart open

lay me across the antlered shape of what went

one way, - then another, sky breaking

faithfully - fitfully- across it, smooth then rough,

then rougher still—

the spokes turn like someone buckling

their armor,

                                    - vested

on the precipice : past the bestiary that stretches

into my arms :                           

 tilled field on which

we lap the last signal light   and I - an arrested crest

                 pick up every suffering, stunned thing

and look it in the eyes                         - if it starts,

to hold it down

in the ongoing wind

I turned to face the tree, its copious leaves

incessantly turning –

the ink I spilled stands on another year’s end,

claw and trunk detached

            madder clay,
scudded heel

                                                 bares up its tangled roots

its unmistakable bell
flies straight into

              your mouth

to grasp the baffled, buzzing stillness inside the field,

banquet on which we built

a temple to the gods and then
tore it down

It nonetheless wept

behind the shadows unchanging.

rouse of the jackdaw’s scream

imperial in the wreckage. To be seen and see


the grass change under my feet—

jays and robins dip and dive from high to low, and the trees, surprise syllable of

the last remaining yellow flowers, leaf-


turn to pinkish-red, blush –


gather the cut flowers to my chest, a sharp parade

in between the unspoken roots.

no your hands at the edges of thought

simply thinking:

something inscrutable crept into the shape,

leaves piling there 


the moon rises its concealed smile 


insistent – the kingfisher’s gentle pecking checkered

lichen warm fall

ash                   another bird flies through


the scrap of melody in the air just now          like fingers lightly coiling in a fist

to adjust a linen skirt, or the rustle of confetti

across a face –


it has taken all these years to reach me

Paloma Yannakakis’ poems can be found in Lana Turner, Washington Square, Denver Quarterly, Tagvverk and other journals. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University.

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