Poems by Clara Quinlan
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Dragonfly, Shelling
by Clara Quinlan
From Canary Spring 2014
Clara lives in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, where Longs Peak looms in the near distance and Coal Creek cuts dramatically across the land.
How silver clings to the dawn the rain
Stammering, its threaded wings
under the wind see we all hold on
with our many arms iridescent
larvae curled against the underbelly of pier,
magenta sheen, flecks of blue,
tiniest instance of
something I might walk toward
were I lost, were this water
across the anviled world to carry me
no longer
Its chitin shell with shape with eyes
emergent as it could be again in this stirring –
harmony soft of scraping leaves
soon dripping, sound
to be numbered and the tattered shore
radiant with the born
Come closer
as if this eased the possession
deliver yourself hapless
each falls into the lapping but for the one
in your palm, taut-winged, transmuting the light.
© Clara Quinlan
House Frame In November
by Clara Quinlan
From Canary Fall 2013
Snow passes through
the living room like sand spilling
from an unfolded hand.
The upstairs closet tucking its white
linens deep in each corner.
From the crest of the hills, trees dyed
with the last of autumn pour down,
host of barked wood shivering
behind these smooth beams,
a canvas for each room: browns,
grays surfacing to orange, the rafters
unable to quell the fire of
leaves taunting the gauzy dome
above. If we found the room
where first prints might appear, palm
the gathering snow (here, a stolen
beginning, the fundamental hour)
our flesh’s heat taken in by the floor,
could we then be blameless?
Space left above our chapped hands
an echo of what we once were,
we could rise from this much.
© Clara Quinlan
House Frame In November
by Clara Quinlan
From Canary Fall 2012
Snow passes through
the living room like sand spilling
from an unfolded hand.
The upstairs closet tucking its white
linens deep in each corner.
From the crest of the hills, trees dyed
with the last of autumn pour down,
host of barked wood shivering
behind these smooth beams,
a canvas for each room: browns,
grays surfacing to orange, the rafters
unable to quell the fire of
leaves taunting the gauzy dome
above. If we found the room
where first prints might appear, palm
the gathering snow (here, a stolen
beginning, the fundamental hour)
our flesh’s heat taken in by the floor,
could we then be blameless?
Space left above our chapped hands
an echo of what we once were,
we could rise from this much.
© Clara Quinlan
Night Walk
by Clara Quinlan
From Canary Fall 2012
And none save me
in shoes – fearless, the tendered arc
of the cricket from the grasses,
moon kernel, lunar zippering,
the white dog advances, astral, says
soon the snow, says always this
return, clusters of stripped birch
the debris, the sorrow left
upon the stammering breast. Shadows in
the gathered pines, wind-stirred;
across distant hills the forest fire as ruby,
as invitation, the only match to see by
in this untold room and then might I
find all that’s left willing? Here slight,
here gone, the heart the untenable,
traps the stars low enough
to gather – desire bestowed, unfaltering –
handful of glitter should I forget
these tracks, the field’s dark want,
ghosted delight beckons
the exceptional loss. Is the white dog
slight with tremble and released
to the point of intoxicant, mouth
breaking open, shutting,
breeze-stolen, pink-tinged ears –
white flame before me
unfastens the field and would that I
accompany her, surely a lumine witness,
the earnest needles of the dark
bowed, fraught with salvation.
© Clara Quinlan
Northing
by Clara Quinlan
Isn’t the ice in the distance traveling,
doesn’t it know of my approach,
the red, jagged trees a painter’s stroke
sweeping from the highway, rushing over
each hill. This far, have I already come
without you, a faint disappearance
into black, brittle limbs
collapsing from fire, here
a turn to marrow, to my own interminable
exit; have I not coveted you, dark drifts
on the tongue, spine icicled, mindless,
my body endures, the scallops of mountains blued
without trees, the river’s green glass
advancing from the glacier, spilling against
the road, isn’t it cracking, isn’t it
heaving, when was I told to wrest the song,
pass through in mute, alkaline and silt,
breath’s vaporous fingers
a new hour, an unknown stage, the ice
far above and tremulous. When I place
my hand upon the chandeliered river
enter this: while there is still time, tell me
--
how might the end be spared? Hands
indulgent, bucketing all that is strewn
wild, trafficking your many forms, the barren
flesh sings, crystallized, trees tilt
and claw at the relics of light. Spooling up,
a congregation of
white butterflies from the grasses
render the air, demand reprieve against
the vast, the tundra
uninterrupted, glaciers yawning into kingdoms and how
might the slight wing survive?
To put my mouth upon
the prayer that keeps you
and devour, your fingers struck gold my love
--
with conquering. Let nothing come
between, our stride thickened under
jagged bush, gnarled shoots
mask the creek we search for, we hear
as glass clinking somewhere into
collapse. You who know no end.
The earth will refuse, rocks caught
under sponged lichen beneath our feet as if
the ground should boil. Sky cobbled
in thermals insisting solitude. Give up
your small narrative as time measures itself
only in the empty space our bodies
cleave. A colony of Kittiwakes rises
from the broken black stalks, hip high,
syntax of wings scattering the luckless
vapors of cloud, do not mistake this
for mercy, joy you can attend, the vital damp of green
banished. Toward indulgence, the tendriled snow
atop the mountain cuts its host in faint bones.
Where bounty still abides, bring me
--
born from winter, a system of white mapping the flesh
unwanted, feathered and receding, how far
again should I have followed? You,
wealth of debris, gild the sutured room;
windtorn and willing, I hunger beyond frozen waters.
© Clara Quinlan
Palace of Unfinished Glass
Ice Climbing, Finley Creek
by Clara Quinlan
Given to the lead smudges of trees,
capped in a struggling river,
white, like a sponge,
collecting a bit of rock here and there, sucking
our limbs, parasite of the secret moon
as ghost. Into the far rebel pieces of cloud,
we advance;
lush sound, snow
collapses, trees shoot down their stars,
curtaining our view like splotches
on an old photo, when this glass fortress
was never ours, never asked
for our arrival,
crampons gnashing the glacier’s crust,
packs crossed in hammer and adze, beak-nosed, and above,
mountain spring stunned into icicles
like baleen raked from a mouth,
wind wheedles through
wind, scarleting cheeks, chutes of alder
crimson against our backs
as strung from the ice-sapped rope
we ascend this barricade, each limb a wing, jacketed blade
pinwheeling into
dimples, depressions, irregular dents,
up the rippling throat of ice, hammering,
would that we advance
bright and boundless
as the metal cranes of axes pocket the face, spate of scars,
screws splintering spider webs white
beneath ice’s surface, glacial milk, bleached sun
snow expanding like the sea
and even breath has silhouette,
water charming just below the planked river
as we search for what’s good:
green ice, sea blue,
iridescent scales crowding up,
haunches of deer
flashing, snow-clutched
to the knees –
at home, the dog’s water bowl
quartzed, porch door stitched in glaze –
under the impression this mirrored dome
is on the side we climb on,
loom of ice like a ship’s hull
we might reel in or
liquid baptismal reaching past the clouds or
cosmic bits, lucent shields, ice so vast
it is a ballroom, what can we
compass this into.
© Clara Quinlan