The Hat Called Sky: — Blackbird Archive

← v10n1, Spring 2011

First, the firemen dressed in canvas

then the smoke scribbles dead birds

before your eyes, who can know

the arc of killdeer

from the thunder-vise of aortic cataract—

All of them as if in congregation

standing up with hymnals blanking their faces—

the dead lamp with its nib of black tongue

lollygagging the Mistress’ planet

Mars setting with a full moon over Palestine.

Elmer Fudd eating crispily an eternally orange carrot;

little blind-bling miltons

moving sideways like crabs at his feet.

All our religions increasingly unworthy

of Thee

like a stranded cat in a tree.

religion mortality war

Norman Dubie

Norman Dubie’s newest collection of poems, Robert Schumann is Mad Again, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2019. His work, which includes books of poetry and aphorisms such as Lumen de Lumine (Paper Press Books, 2017), The Quotations of Bone (Copper Canyon Press, 2015), The Volcano (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), The Insomniac Liar of Topo (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), has been translated into over thirty languages. Dubie has won the 2016 Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize from POETRY , and the PEN Center USA Award for Best Poetry Collection in 2002. He has received fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photo by Matt Valentine