Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
New Poetry

Sharon Dolin


3 poems from Oblique Strategies after Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt


Do nothing for as long as possible

until static becomes mantic
        resonates into hectic music
        until it is not the absence of movement
but the movement of your absence.

As God withdrew and contracted
        to make room for the world
        contract and withdraw to make
a womb for the word

which is not silent as Cage
        well knew: the mind dances best
        in the shadow of sound
which is never the absence of light:

who said darkness
        is the right hand of light—
        how else read letters without
the black fire on white?


Only a part, not a whole

is what you do best:

feather » petal » fingernail » take five
lines now make a portrait

five words make a line

as dog’s belly to cool
wood floor » droplet not downpour

pulse not throb » one bead
not the necklace » one person

not the tribe » not every
crow murders not every hen

broods nor every raven conspires
nor every hummingbird charms » you:

no minyan same of fingers
toes » stylus of woe » pluck

a smile of quaver » each
partial thing glows as solo

one jay on the fence

makes a party of blue.


Turn it upside down

As in your life: in what you hold
what you push away

the feet have their own kind
of mind

like a child’s painting—
red stabs on blue look

devil one way spikes
of abstract fire when flipped

everyone says race and you
start to run

everyone says immigrant sundown
and forgets to write home

everyone says stranger
and checks their surname at the door

everyone says wall and forgets
their own great- great- who

scaled them all.

 

SHARON DOLIN is the award-winning author of six poetry collections, most recently Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). Her translation from Catalan of Gemma Gorga’s Book of Minutes appeared in the Field Translation Series (Oberlin College Press, 2019). Her memoir Hitchcock Blonde is forthcoming from Terra Nova Press in 2020. She lives in New York City where she is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press and directs Writing About Art in Barcelona.