SARAH ROSE NORDGRENThe Cell
After her life goes out, she might turn just the perfect color and link herself into a strand of hair. Or, depending on her assignment, she could lie trampled on the wet forest floor all winter until one morning I walk past and don’t notice she’s decomposed. She could hold her sisters above her on a long stalk. Otherwise she’s consumed by them and the evidence destroyed. She serves the faith behind the word. Speaks a yes or no language, a code that translates either as die or don’t die quite yet. She is the best listener in the world. She composes the world. The switch flips one way and she grows out of nowhere, tiny mass in a larger body. Then she hears the signal and switches back off automatically–– A beacon. A TV screen. Stitched up eye or oyster. 174 The Paris-American Sarah Rose
Nordgren is the author of Best Bones (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), winner of
the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are
forthcoming in Agni, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, and the Best New Poets anthology. A recipient of two fellowships from the
Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a 2014 Individual Excellence Award
from the Ohio Arts Council, Sarah Rose earned degrees from Sarah Lawrence
College and the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she held the
Fred Chappell Fellowship. She grew up in Durham, NC and currently lives in
Cincinnati. For more information visit sarahrosenordgren.com.
Photo Credit: Daniel Dyar |
Next week's poet:
Keith Leonard |