A Light Says Why, by Karen Volkman

A light says why. From all the poor prying. Again we attain a more
regal posture–small bird accompanying slips between our whim.
Where will we flicker, loose as two feathers from a wren’s back? Gone,
do not brood for all the hands that miss you. They hardly hold. Don’t
wait, one who thought a dark eye could save you, like night with its black
paws curled and gone to sleep. There are only two names to remember,
Loss and Pleasure, crossed in this field like no man’s borrowed light. Call
the far-sighted foxes to the launching. Call the small deer scattered in
the back brush, swift as flit. Contingency has arms and hands and wasted
faces. And a body, shrunk and scurvy, built to burn.

Sonnet [Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,], by Karen Volkman

Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,
the earth, blue egg, in its seeping shell
dispensing damage like a hollow hell
inchling weeping for a minor sea

ticking its tidelets, x and y and z.
The blue beneficence we call and spell
and call blue heaven, the whiteblue well
of constant water, deepening a thee,

a thou and who, touching every what—
and in the or, a shudder in the cut—
and that you are, blue mirror, only stare

bluest blankness, whether in the where,
sheen that bleeds blue beauty we are taught
drowns and booms and vowels.  I will not.