Carnivorous

By Lucie Brock-Broido b. 1956 Lucie Brock-Broido

I was lying loose from God. Strange is it not best

Beloved, in the New World, in this skinny life,

Intemperate with chance, my spirit quickens

For the fall’s estate. In India, the half

Hour is the hour, we were like that then—

Jammed wrong & wrong in the diurnal

Mangy chambers of our carnall

Hearts, the rose robes rustling loose as velvet

Curtains at the stage prow, passing

Into the strange salt air of an Indian

Ocean, hoarding kindling, heading

West with hours, later than we might

Have known, counting tins of meats & oil left,

If they should lose or last the night.

Source: The Master Letters (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995)

Biography

Lucie Brock-Broido was born in Pittsburgh, was educated at Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities, and has taught at Bennington, Princeton, Harvard (where she was a Briggs-Copeland poet), and Columbia. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as awards from the American Poetry Review and the Academy of American Arts and Letters.

In an interview with Carol Maso for BOMB magazine in . . .

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