Another Horizontal Lyric — Blackbird Archive

← v11n2, Fall 2012

The yellow ball stays where the boy has thrown it,

stalled in the air inches from the nose

Of a leaping border collie who hangs a foot

above the ground. The boy’s arm is stuck

At a characteristic angle, cantilevered. In a lawn chair

his mother holds the brush that will never reach her toenail,

One drop of pink levitating just above her skin.

So many cars immobilized. A lawn mower founders,

Fountaining green. And in a dark bedroom, a woman

hesitates forever above the transfixed body

Of a lover, seized up for the incoming stroke.

Time is a mercy of completion, our nerves

Going up in meaningless smoke, our animal hearts released.

time mortality body

T.R. Hummer

T.R. Hummer is the author of fifteen books of poetry and essays, most recently In These States (Jacar Press, 2020) and Eon (Louisiana State University Press, 2018). His most recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker , New York Quarterly , and Rattle . A former professor, he served as editor-in-chief for the Kenyon Review , The New England Review , and The Georgia Review . He has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in poetry, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Donald Justice Award for Poetry. Formerly a professor and editor, he now lives in Cold Spring, New York. Photo by David Limburg