POEM OF THE WEEK: JOS CHARLES

Jos Charles

---

from June

 

                                  A house
                                  under construction
                                  faded fence, a pear
                                  rot in the sun
                                  who knew
                                  who knew
                                  measurement
a parliament of lamps where a room dims
                                  the window I left
                                  open enough for
                                  you to appear

 

---

 

                      Left
                      the desert, who
you were   Design witness
to itself      The unthinkable
once come to you
                      Welcome
                a woman cradles
nothing in her arms
here too beechwood

 

---

 

a name bundles
a name a mountain cut out

 

the sky to say nothing
of frost a name

 

sculpts
sculpts midair

 

each time you begin
I step down a mountain

 

---

Jos Charles is author of feeld, a Pulitzer finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, selected by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions) and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press). Charles has poetry published with POETRY, Poem-a-Day, PEN, Washington Square Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. In 2016 she received the Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship through the Poetry Foundation. Jos Charles has an MFA from the University of Arizona. She is a PhD student at UC Irvine and currently resides in Long Beach, CA.