SOME LIVES OF WATER by Dan Featherston

Some Lives of Water

All night
rain falling over the house

●

Kettle’s
tumbled thrum
drum

●

Stalks stood
in root
scribbled glass

●

One drop:
the whole room dangles there

●

Face floating
raised between
basin & palms

Face falling
broken

●

Some sealed
sweet

Some suckling
spout

Some broken
by light

●

Coiled green
under a bush

●

Ice trayed
staved

●

Turbid
amber
tinted
tumbler

●

All afternoon
rain falling inside the piano

●

Pauses
puddled
light

●

Detective novel’s
steam grate

Textbook’s
scattered billiard balls

●

Shook belly’s hollow
heart of floating soap

●

Nippled hydrant

Eyes sore with looking

●

Solid liquid gas

Fist palm fingers

●

Evening
even the sky
liquid

●

All night
house on fire under an ocean

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Dan Featherston’s books of poetry include The Radiant World (BlazeVox, 2009), The Clock Maker’s Memoir (Cuneiform Press, 2007), and United States (Factory School, 2005). He teaches at Temple University and lives in Philadelphia with Rachel McCrystal and their rescue companion animals.

“Some Lives of Water” appears in The Radiant World (BlazeVox, 2009).