Bronwen Tate is the author of the chapbooks Souvenirs (Dusie 2007), Like the Native Tongue the Vanquished (Cannibal Books 2008), Scaffolding (Dusie 2009), and the loss letters (Dusie 2011), a collaboration with Ming Holden. Bronwen makes her friends hungry on her blog at http://breadnjamforfrances.blogspot.com. She’s a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University where she’s completing a dissertation on scale in post-1945 poetry.
If out an open window,
To paint the Roman soldier’s sandals, it is necessary to believe that the straps wrap around his leg.
In Dutch, to rust is to rest in a strange stone box where snakes come up from the sea. Width of my head grazing granite.
In a froth of blossoms. In a slum of bloom.
I mark the mosquito’s visit with a punishing x of my untrimmed right thumbnail.
I cried through the coffee and juice portion of breakfast as I read about your son’s suicide.
On a scroll weathered blank, scratch the raw initials of your own dead.