Shira Dentz

Pulling air into a tight vortex

spins into a poem, readymade. I knew nothing of
how poems came to be, so willed them. Like
waterspouts, they twirled language, split history,
inside and outside. Today’s air is wildfire from
hundreds of miles north, and Texas is hotter than
the hottest place on Earth.

When I saw sun had soaked up the rain that had
pooled on the roof outside my office window, I
wished I could watch time in motion forever.
There’s some comfort there, I don’t know why.

The Stair

I’d like to sway to one side as the trees do, letting something
else get there first. Maybe that something’s very wide and the
trees are making room, or deferring; their nod does seem on
the meek side. It couldn’t be the sun they’re leaning towards
since the sun arcs everywhere in the sky. So what do we have
left, that they all bow in the same direction?

Instead of speech, different shades of green, one on top of
another, sinking into featheriness, spreading wide, opening
silently to echoes of exhilaration in a hallway from childhood
where hope and defeat came and went, like the different
shades. Why love air, something not there. Sewn-in roots
submerged like trees.

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Lana Turner, Brooklyn Rail, Plume, Apartment, Nat Brut, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, New American Writing, Poets.org, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards, Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Prize, and Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award.