Jeff Crandall

I Am Your Winged Torso of Eros

“Everything breakable in you has been broken . . .”
— Daniel Hall

Archival air belies the dirt they drew me from.
My wings lie crumbled in that ground still.
(Fingers marked unknown in a Reykjavik museum,
one ear completes a French recruiter’s stall.)
Fluorescence pours its green on all of us.
Why then return to face this embarrassment
of cracks and absence, blind luck and loss?

You’ve got it wrong (in sneakers and jeans, the docent’s
sneeze, the guidebook’s backward fold): Let me go
into the world: part saffron-dusted swallowtail,
part fountain jazz, wine and laughlines. The stone
heart erodes, forgotten as a pearl in its fossil shell.
Take, instead, the light sighs . . . I am broken,
yes, but broken like bread — a piece for everyone.

 

Jeff Crandall is a poet and artist living in Seattle.

3 thoughts on “Jeff Crandall

  1. Beautiful work, Jeff! I admire the last stanza especially, and your deft use of rhyme. I don’t get line 4, but that doesn’t matter when the whole poem is so lovely.

    I’m glad Lee Sharkey found and published this one!

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