Arrow Breaking Apart

By Jason Shinder 1955–2008 Jason Shinder

While lovers sleep, I dig my nails into the earth,

holding up traffic. Just now a cloud has pulled up

while I was talking to the Emptiness

of the Universe and my voice plugged into the waves

at the bottom of the ocean.

My heart is taped up like a child’s drawing

of the moon over the broken window of the sky

where the wind always comes back to fill my lungs.

I will dance on my shadow. I will open my mouth

with the air inside my mother’s coffin.

I will be the arrow breaking apart in the body

of the blackbird, which appears at my window, singing.

Source: Stupid Hope (Graywolf Press, 2009)

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, poet and editor Jason Shinder grew up there and in Merrick, New York. He earned a BA at Skidmore College.

Shinder is the author of three collections of poetry: the posthumously published Stupid Hope (2009), Among Women (2001), and Every Room We Ever Slept In (1993), a New York Public Library Notable Book. In a review of Among Women, poet Carol Muske-Dukes observed, “I don’t know of any male poet that . . .

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