ELEGY*

Kim Roberts

    Stronghold of bone,
    citadel of sinew,
    refuge of cartilage.
    Harbor in the veins
     
    where the blood can rage and foam.
    What bulwark
    in the sternum and scapula,
    the delicate clavicle.


    She sails for a lee tide,
    for a daybreak shore. 
    We don't know how
    to rebuild ramparts for each other


    or how to talk about love.
    We don't know love's semaphores
    or how to build a tent for the stars.
    What do we know?

    We can't ask each gate
    to raise its finials higher.
    We can't ask mere rock to crest,
    to be a ladder toward the light.

    for Neysa Ojalvo (1928-2009)

    
Kim Roberts - Kim Roberts is the editor of the on-line journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly ,the author of three books of poems, most recently Animal Magnetism, winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize (Pearl Editions, January 2011), as well as a nonfiction chapbook, Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word Poetry in DC (Beltway Books, 2010), and editor of the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010). Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Mandarin. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission on the Arts, the Humanities Council of Washington, DC, and has been a writer-in-residence at twelve artist colonies. Kim Roberts  in this issue... Tags: Thanal Online, web magazine dedicated for poetry and literature Kim Roberts, ELEGY*
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