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Kay Ryan

Elephant Rocks

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  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    n any collision, one strikes;

    the other is stricken. This

    is a given with the nano-

    calculations made possible

    through silicon.

    Earlier centuries depended

    on testimony to know

    the bender from the bent,

    and often judged an act

    by how it ended. Many bumps

    were simply abandoned to the

    morass of simultaneous action.

    Love being among them.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    Wooden
    In the presence of supple

    goodness, some people

    grow less flexible,

    experiencing a woodenness

    they wouldn’t have thought possible.

    It is as strange and paradoxical

    as the combined suffering

    of Pinocchio and Geppetto

    if Pinocchio had turned and said,

    I can’t be human after all.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    Distance
    The texts

    are insistent:

    it takes two points

    to make a distance.

    The cubit,

    for instance,

    is nothing

    till you use it.

    Then it is rigid

    and bracelike;

    it has actual strength.

    Something metal

    runs through

    every length—

    the very armature

    of love, perhaps.

    Only distance

    lets distance collapse.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    A Plain Ordinary Steel Needle Can Float on Pure Water
    —Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

    Who hasn’t seen

    a plain ordinary

    steel needle float serene

    on water as if lying on a pillow?

    The water cuddles up like Jell-O.

    It’s a treat to see water

    so rubbery, a needle

    so peaceful, the point encased

    in the tenderest dimple.

    It seems so simple

    when things or people

    have modified each other’s qualities

    somewhat;

    we almost forget the oddity

    of that.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    Sonnet to Spring
    The brown, unpleasant,

    aggressively ribbed and

    unpliant leaves of the loquat,

    shaped like bark canoes that

    something squashed flat,

    litter the spring cement.

    A fat-cheeked whim of air—

    a French vent or some similar affair—

    with enough choices in the front yard

    for a blossomy puff worthy of Fragonard,

    instead expends its single breath

    beneath one leathery leaf of loquat

    which flops over and again lies flat.

    Spring is frivolous like that.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    Surfaces serve

    their own purposes,

    strive to remain

    constant (all lives

    want that). There is

    a skin, not just on

    peaches but on oceans

    (note the telltale

    slough of foam on beaches).

    Sometimes it’s loose,

    as in the case

    of cats: you feel how a

    second life slides

    under it. Sometimes it

    fits. Take glass.

    Sometimes it outlasts

    its underside. Take reefs.

    The private lives of surfaces

    are innocent, not devious.

    Take the one-dimensional

    belief of enamel in itself,

    the furious autonomy

    of luster (crush a pearl—

    it’s powder), the whole

    curious seamlessness

    of how we’re each surrounded

    and what it doesn’t teach.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    I have written

    over the doors

    of the various

    houses and stores

    where friends

    and supplies were.

    Now I can’t

    locate them anymore

    and must shout

    general appeals

    in the street.

    It is a miracle

    to me now—

    when a piece

    of the structure unseals

    and there is a dear one,

    coming out,

    with something

    for me to eat.
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    The trick would be to be

    part Midas—to have

    a switch inside us

    we could flick at our

    pleasure. It would be

    nice to plate a chalice

    or turn the neighbor’s dog

    to treasure or add

    mettle to lettuce—

    to practice playful

    acts of malice, table-

    top amusements—

    stopping short

    of where the goblets

    started breeding goblets
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    We know it is close

    to something lofty.

    Simply getting over being sick

    or finding lost property

    has in it the leap,

    the purge, the quick humility

    of witnessing a birth—

    how love seeps up

    and retakes the earth.

    There is a dreamy

    wading feeling to your walk

    inside the current

    of restored riches,

    clocks set back,

    disasters averted
  • Rafael Ramoshas quotedlast year
    Any morning

    can turn molten

    without warning.

    Every object

    can grow fluent.

    Suddenly the kitchen

    has a sulfur river

    through it;

    there is a burping

    from the closet,

    a release of

    caustic gases

    from the

    orange juice glasses.

    The large appliances

    are bonding in a way

    that isn’t pleasant

    on linoleum as friable

    as bacon. We never

    fathom how we caused it,

    or why we

    never see it coming

    like Hawaii.
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