On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths

Read On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths for Free Online Page A

Book: Read On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths for Free Online
Authors: Lucia Perillo
calculated
    the correct thrust-to-weight ratio and heave dynamics.
    On YouTube you can watch it flying in the moonlight
    outside the engineering building with the fake Ionic columns.

    I said “sorrow” for the fear that in the future all the beauties
    will be replaced by replicas that have more glare and blare and bling.
    RoboSeed, RoboRose, RoboHeart, RoboSoul—

    this way there’ll be no blight
    on any of the cherished encapsulations

    when the blight was what we loved.

    5.
    They grow in chains from the bigleaf maple, chains
    that lengthen until they break.
    In June,

    when the days are long and the sky is full
    and the swept pile thickens
    with the ones grown brown and brittle,

    oh see how I’ve underestimated the persistence
    of the lace in their one wing.

    6.
    Is there no slim chance I will feel it

    when some molecule of me
    (annealed by fire, like coal or glass)

    is drawn up in the phloem of a maple
    (please scatter my ashes under a maple)

    so my speck can blip out
    on a stem sprouting out of the fork of a branch,

    the afterthought of a flower
    that was the afterthought of a bud,

    transformed now into a seed with a wing,
    like the one I wore on the tip of my nose

    back when I was green.

About the Author

    Lucia Perillo’s fifth book of poems,
Inseminating the Elephant
(Copper Canyon, 2009), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Washington State Book Award and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize from the Library of Congress. Her book of stories,
Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain
, will be published by Norton in 2012, and a book of her essays,
I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing
, is out in paperback from Trinity University Press.

Acknowledgments

    Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications, in which these poems first appeared:
    The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Barrow Street, Kenyon Review Online, The Los Angeles Review, New England Review, The New Yorker, Orion, Ploughshares, Poetry, Rio Grande Review, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, Southern California Review, Subtropics, Tin House,
and
Voices in Italian Americana.

Copyright 2012 by Lucia Perillo
    All rights reserved

    Cover art: Giotto di Bondone, detail from
The Last
    Judgement
, ca. 1305.

    Photo credit: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

    Support Copper Canyon Press:

    If you have enjoyed this title, please consider supporting Copper Canyon Press and our dedication to bringing the work of emerging, established, and world-renowned poets to an expanding audience through eBooks:
    www.coppercanyonpress.org/pages/donation.asp

    Contact Copper Canyon Press:

    To contact us with feedback about this title send an e-mail to:
    [email protected]

    The Chinese character for poetry is made up of two parts: “word” and “temple.” It also serves as pressmark for Copper Canyon Press.

    Since 1972, Copper Canyon Press has fostered the work of emerging, established, and world-renowned poets for an expanding audience. The Press thrives with the generous patronage of readers, writers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, students, and funders— everyone who shares the belief that poetry is vital to language and living.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
    Amazon.com
    Anonymous
    Arcadia Fund
    John Branch
    Diana and Jay Broze
    Beroz Ferrell & The Point, LLC
    Mimi Gardner Gates
    Carolyn and Robert Hedin
    Golden Lasso, LLC
    Gull Industries, Inc. on behalf of William and Ruth True
    Lannan Foundation
    Rhoady and Jeanne Marie Lee
    Maurer Family Foundation
    National Endowment for the Arts
    New Mexico Community Foundation
    Penny and Jerry Peabody
    Joseph C. Roberts
    Cynthia Lovelace Sears and Frank Buxton
    Washington State Arts Commission
    Charles and Barbara Wright
    To learn more about underwriting Copper Canyon Press titles, please call 360-385-4925 ext. 103

Similar Books

Change Of Heart

Nikki Winter

Deadly Interest

Julie Hyzy

What Daddy Did

Donna Ford

Death as a Last Resort

Gwendolyn Southin

Fervor

Chantal Boudreau