Songs from a Brevity of Breath
Dale Going
More open than a syllable or word
I am searching for a verticality to counter
the quilled bed’s horizontal strings
A brevity of breath
I am becoming less dense
A stumbling of notes to reach a destination
steps together––stops
where god the father doesn’t hold us back
doesn’t hold us/ doesn’t hold us back
After listening I developed a deep
low voice quiet and resonant at once
quiet as god a loop looping
regretfully cannot attend
“ “ “
*
Memory’s a recluse
surrounded and haunted
in this reeling of the animality
of everything, birds eat berries
a chord ends a sentence
a profusion is a flow
an event a conclusion
an austerity of order
sufficient for a time
and then just—
Dale Going is a poet/book artist living in Manhattan. Books include "The View They Arrange" (Kelsey St. Press), "As/of the Whole" (SFSU Award, selected by Brenda Hillman), and numerous chapbooks. She has received support from Fund for Poetry, California Arts Council, Yaddo and Djerassi. Her Em Press letterpress editions are archived in prominent libraries. New work appears in VOLT, New American Writing, Equinox, Griffel, LandLocked, Milk Press, Stone Canoe, Under a Warm Green Linden, Vestiges, Wild Roof Journal, and Blood Orange, Banyan, Ginosko, Nelligan and Tiger Moth Reviews. She recently married the man she fell in love with in 1973.