[Sleeping sister of a farther sky]

By Karen Volkman b. 1967 Karen Volkman

Sleeping sister of a farther sky,

dropped from zenith like a tender tone,

the lucid apex of a scale unknown

whose whitest whisper is an opaque cry

of measureless frequency, the spectral sigh

you breath, bright hydrogen and brighter zone

of fissured carbon, consummated moan

and ceaseless rapture of a brilliant why.

Will nothing wake you from your livid rest?

Essence of ether and astral stone

the stunned polarities your substance weaves

in one bright making, like a dream of leaves

in the tree’s mind, summered. Or as a brooding bone

roots constellations in the body’s nest.

Source: Emblem (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008)

Biography

Born in Miami, poet Karen Volkman earned a BA at New College and an MA at Syracuse University and completed a year of doctoral studies at the University of Houston. Her poetry collections include Crash’s Law (1996), selected for the National Poetry Series by Heather McHugh; Spar (2002), which won the James Laughlin Award and the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Nomina (2008). Her poetry has been featured in the anthologies The New . . .

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