The Singing — Blackbird Archive

← v8n2, Fall 2009

I welded myself between the days

of January, February. But they sang

as I boiled parasites from the bath.

They sang as I lowered into that water.

I wanted a blue night with blue-white rings,

lifts of smoke-light from the centuried houses.

To be on the balcony with Josh,

with Martin and Rose, watching smoke from chimneys.

I wanted to see others alive

and count myself among them.

But they sang as I boiled parasites

from the bath. They sang

as I lowered into their water.

grief mortality place

Katie Ford

Katie Ford is the author of the poetry collection Colosseum (Graywolf Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Levis Reading Prize; the chapbook Storm (Marick Press, 2007); and the poetry collection Deposition (Graywolf, 2002). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review , The Paris Review , Ploughshares , Partisan Review , Seneca Review , Poets & Writers , and Pleiades . Her work is forthcoming in The New Yorker , Smartish Pace , and Bayou Magazine . She was poetry editor of the New Orleans Review from 2005–2009, and she has taught at Loyola University and Reed College. Ford is currently a professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.