Brenda Hillman

::: An Oddness :::

A scent      rather quietly      loves
the library.      Readers   look up:    a
life of paper      inside   the great
Life:   scent of greenly      ravished civilization ~
dream of inspiration      freed.   When a
book is      lifted      from horizon's steel
that mystery      object   spreads      an oddness
each call number      a timeling   of
yellow math,       its curve      leftover from
epic.      The mind   had no   periphery
for meaning,    the several phoenician,   sailing
sideways      through vowels  of the dead.

::: Fourth-floor Hecatomb :::

   Air in the       stretched   therefore   part
of the library      smells      like the
     back of a mask.      Glue from
   meal   &   bone      cooked   in iron
pots.      In epics,      this always happens~
mixtures   of research      & rural,   searchful
   frass &     some might say      used
 god parts.      So much   stubborn air
   escapes      the canon.   A dream  makes
   its own lining.      Sweet   artaud dust
flies      through decades,   lands      where a
sprawl isaiah      sleeps    in an armchair~

::: Brittle Economics Monographs :::

      Readers are crying   in the HF's;
the epoch of paper   loses breath:
   graphs and maps,    prone algebra swiggles;
knowledge is lonely      since   meaning left.
A seaquake   dire & sleety   marx
      boy passes      holding your book   (might
pass   might hold)   its fabric   shipped
tariffless   by cypher code.  Old Blake
   sleeps upside down   in the radiance
forrest   six aisles hence   then anti-sleeps,
      a bunchy   brown aura   around his
head   while dust   contrives   the paradox~

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Brenda Hillman is the author of seven collections of poetry, including the forthcoming Pieces of Air in the Epic (Wesleyan, 2005). She teaches at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California. contents | next