The Insatiable Fields

BY Paula Bohince

The insatiable fields that swallow
whole snakes and groundhogs, I’ve seen them —
those holes — I’ve seen the swallow
waver in her ether, you mean
we can’t exchange one world for another?
Is it a matter of matter
or space? Are we replacements or ourselves?
When we lie down, are we lying
together, citizens or friends, as souls
or as armor? When we die, do we divide
and are conquered? In the end, are we belittled
or gigantic, pure or fragments of each other
or both, flying forever?

 

Biography

PAULA BOHINCE is the author of The Children (2012) and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (2008), both published by Sarabande Books. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, and elsewhere. The 2012 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place, she is a past recipient of the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship.

 

Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com

Permalink URL: https://www.cerisepress.com/04/12/the-insatiable-fields