Paul J. Pastor is author of several books, most recently Bower Lodge: Poems (Fernwood Press). He serves as a senior editor for HarperCollins, and contributing poetry editor for Ekstasis magazine. He lives in Oregon.
Asleep, awake. There is the duck, there is the drake. Along, alone. This is an egg, that is a stone. Behind, before. There is the wall, there is the door. Before, behind. There are the knocks on the hard mind. Alone, along. That is a lie, this is a song. Awake, asleep. Here are the…
I have known the breathless feeling of a sponge that has been wrung thoroughly and roughly above my life’s chipped sink, squeezed to the point of tearing by the chapped hands of God until my shape was nothing. Until I could not think. I have known the way one squishes at the crushing of one’s…
The world is not so sideways in its luck as people say; there still are futures of a healthful gain; rain still rains. Lichens droop from spruces, wizard-gray, there are yet handsome gambles in the living game; rain still rains. Below the dust crust, we strike water in the hushing cave; crystals lengthen, treasuring the…
For Eugene Gone, I was the bristle in the brittle pines looped fractaling along the highway bends. Mine were raw quills, of goose and porcupine; mine the rock brains; mine the hands that slapped wet prints upon the breaching stones; a tremulous, confessing risk of joy; the silver in the sockets of my bones; the…
