LEILA EINHORN / 3 POEMS
DUET FOR TIPPI HEDREN
after Joshua McKinney’s Small Sillion
Serenade
owl vibratos
in the ear’s
soft silk
barely visible
pied wings
unearthing
night’s sillion
lungs crepuscular
larynx shaking
in a sine
I am not here
I am not
swooned by
a six-strung
vesper gesturing
towards translation
too drunk
to rend
her dress
in grief
Aubade
clear as the ear
of a hare this day
of dew & petrichor
hummingbird
suspended in silk
spiderweb above
the road the river
wrote into stone
I remember the room
I don’t remember the
thrushsong fills
the bedroom scene
feathers gather
in her gashes
a camera’s sunflung
wave giving way
to brumous noon
4 continuity’s sake
everywhere u leave yr
algorithm groping
for drafts of air w/ the
backs of yr hands hunting
for caves of calcified skulls
before there was water
u walked the seabed like
a string before there was
music u carved a flute
from the bone of a vulture
the mountain receives u
where stones slid like teeth
u answer w/ palms of red ochre
a year in hard water
<i kneel 2 interpret
my steps in the shag rug
read the scum
on the drain
like a faultline
a grammar runs in the blood
4 what’s written by hand
remove what’s engraved
in yr body
stamped dance
of seeing
sonic
pornography>
</this is not an actual rendering
of the actual color of the fruit
which has an almost
white hue when ripe>
Leila Einhorn’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in 8 Poems, Apricity, and elsewhere. An editorial assistant for the Colorado Review, Leila is the recipient of a Tremblay-Crow Creative Writing Fellowship from Colorado State University, where she is currently pursuing an MFA. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her partner and their pet rat. Find her on Twitter: @LeilaEinhorn.