Guest poet: Monika Cooper

Unreal Season: 20 Lunes

Unreal Season

two windows reflect
one lamp in
two different rooms


the chimney smoke hangs
dark across
the long highway home


ragged nests, hidden
in spring, now
exposed to sunset

.

winter tree shadows—
white tiger
asleep in the woods


snow powders mazy
paths about
the pathless woods


hawk on a streetlamp
hunched against
the highway rainfall


visibly moved, dark
clouds polish
the pearl from inside


smoke impregnates the
page: women
sway to the priest’s drone


cold’s shadow sheets like
smoke behind
the home crucifix

.

rough parity of
tapers, spare
light of single flame


three panes of glass string
candle’s flame
in infinite strings


carpet levitates
in the night
an airborne annex


the little dead weights
of useless
paperweight poems

.

unreal season: six
months long and
it doesn’t exist


the dark morning hills
and a white
sky graining downward


church incense perfumes
the mists that
snake among the pines


angry among the
river rocks
catch of snow thrashes


side mirror: watch birds
warp and woof
somewhere behind you


stars and stripes ripple
across trees
—seen through the shadow

.

no two snowflakes and
no two lunes
exactly alike

Monika Cooper studied literature and lyric poetry at Thomas More College and University of Dallas. She and her husband are raising and educating their four children in New England. Her book, Allegories of the King, is forthcoming from Cooper & Posey.