Poem of the Week

Poem of the Week

By: Keira Zirkle

The Current Isolation Related Poem Content Details

BY CAMILLE RANKINE

In the half-light, I am most

at home, my shadow

as company.

When I feel hot, I push a button

to make it stop. I mean this stain on my mind

I can’t get out. How human

I seem. Like modern man,

I traffic in extinction. I have a gift.

Like an animal, I sustain.

A flock of birds

when touched, I scatter. I won’t approach

until the back is turned.

My heart betrays. I confess: I am afraid.

How selfish of me.

When there’s no one here, I halve

the distance between

our bodies infinitesimally.

In this long passageway, I pose

against the wallpaper, dig

my heels in, catch the light.

In my vision, the back door opens

on a garden that is always

in bloom. The dogs

are chained so they can’t attack like I know

they want to. In the next yard

over, honeybees swarm

and their sound is huge.

Camille Rankine is a poet and essayist that works on several poet committees. Her poetry has been featured in O: The Oprah Magazine in 2011 and other magazines. She published her own anthology, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, earlier this year. Camille currently “serves on the Executive Committee of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and the Board of Trustees of The Poetry Project, and co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival Poetry Committee. She is a visiting professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA for Poets and Writers, and lives in New York City.”