Excerpt from Means of Egress by Chad Chmielowicz
 |
| forthcoming from Convulsive Editions 32 pages, with letterpress printed covers. |
Too much wind to hazard
an umbrella. For hours
it could rain at any minute
but doesn't. It keeps one
thick branch at a distance
and about this blossoms
lurch in unison like dancers
at each gust. Intermittent
petals come unfastened
and white and pink in
the bright green grass,
shudder and dart,
sharp as fish.
*
In the stillness after a thunderstorm,
I can't sleep. I think of the flat expanses
where I grew up and how you
could see the clouds whiten
miles away as the storm made the random
actual. Think of how the magnolia,
roughly on time, once a year, offers
a similar pleasure, only this one is held
like a note.
*
It's a particular pink, purpler
than I'd imagined. Upon inspection
purpler. Upon reflection, pinker.
*
The vernal pose is a pause. Looking down
I see the split hemispheres of a blue egg.
Looking up, little nest clumped among
the monstrous blossoms. So like a bird,
I go away and come back, thinking
my way in and feeling a way out.
The robin's means of egress is air.
*
Aging, it fails
increasingly
at symmetry.
Chad Chmielowicz’s work has appeared in The Journal, Hobart, The Prism Review, and elsewhere. Means of Egress is his first chapbook, which arose out of his walk to work every morning in Chicago.