Peg says
Luca Signorelli gave even
Michelangelo
ideas, but
exiting from the duomo
in Orvieto
the excellence
of sun still
seems greater to me
than Signorelli.
How great? As great as a cicada
in dry sawgrass
awakened
like a spark; or so it might
feel to you too
if you’d grown up
next door to a casket maker’s
storehouse, a Quonset
hut, salvaged
War Department junk—its galvanized
corrugated sheet metal
like chrome rubbed raw & dull
by year of steel wool
and shivering hot at noon—
it would burn you
burn you good & sorry
if you touched
fingers to metal
while peering through
the grimy windows,
all those market-rate
coffins stacked flat inside on sawhorses
and dark as lead doorways.
Photo: “Corrugated Metal Sheet” by anasararojas; licensed under CC BY 2.0
David Rivard’s new book, Standoff, will appear from Graywolf in early 2016. His five other books include Otherwise Elsewhere, Sugartown, and Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Among his awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and the NEA, as well as the 2006 O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, in recognition of both his writing and teaching. He directs the MFA in Writing program at the University of New Hampshire.
Latest posts by David Rivard (see all)
- Excellence - April 5, 2015