Scrimshaw, JW Burns

Diane Corson, Handmade Paper Bowl

 

Scrimshaw

 

 

A boat carved in bone,
Frozen waves tongues who lost their minds.
A sleeping hull healed by emptiness.
When color isn’t allowed to feed rub your thumb into her hollow cheek.
The whalebone learned light from touch alone;
unfeeling as sun on her vacant breasts.
These sails immune to large hands of wind.

____________________
JW Burns

 

Review by Jared Pearce

The way the images build the poem’s emptiness is wonderful: everything here, from the bone in the first line to the wind in the last, develops a full image of empty, and that tension is, I think, really fine.

Scroll to Top