Previous Issue: Fall/Winter 2009

Of Names  
Amber Clark

and how amazing the names of ex lovers on the tongue
how lovely and sardonic their lull, the names of all the towns
you slept through on your way to somewhere else

how sweeping the names of lost things, unremembered names,
tucked in a botanist’s notebook — calyx and clover and pistil — how sweet
the sound of a gun cocked back and the rooster at dawn, and the thistle

how stunning the names of accuracy, of Euclid’s quadratic, economy, elusive hints
of anatomy, uvulas swinging the foreign name — a wind its certain welt, the sting
of a nematocyst, the telson and the carapace

to crave the wild, delicious names — éclair and brie and fig —
the music of the treble clef and tremble of an aural math, the sprig
of spring come clean again, the cochlea gone mad

 

Amber Clark teaches English and literature at Northwest Florida State College as well as Gulf Coast Community College. Her work can be found in SandScript, Slow Trains, Underground Window, and Poetry365. A graduate of The College of William & Mary and The Radcliffe Publishing Institute, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University at Charlotte.