National Poetry Month: Magdalena Zurawski tonight at Beep Beep Gallery, Atlanta

Conditional poem with lazy fish

When a girl sent with a finger to lift sleep, lifts it,

when she travels wearily, or when she travels lightly,

when she leaves it for an old wind, and her old mood

therein, when she wakes wet with night having

seen horses, when she talks so

‘my birdies fly, they do, they do,’ when she

comes upon a lazy fish that enters the light

of her lazy eye, when the tiny bones along

the tiny spine too lazy to move towards

better weather coast lightly, into a light bed, when she

dumbly says, ‘please take me nocturnally,’ then suddenly

sleep is in her eye, awkward, displaced from constellation.

Thus shackled, she is pinched to reach the territories

in the mouth of rudderless ships.

into thin grass

that this tree is mine ‘cause my bough broke

similarly, means that like any moon figure

i’m oddly unoccupied.

where the young hens collapse, the classic bather

rivals the atmosphere through gunsling. “heat

is her name” was always the appropriate sentence

for him to mutter as he entered the landscape.

when his beauty was enviable,

i’d found myself in heroes, but then

retreated into this lullabye atmosphere.

MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI will read tonight at Beep Beep Gallery (696 Charles Allen Ave NE) in Atlanta at 8 p.m. She and her dog Jack are on a tour with CA Conrad, who will also read as part of the Gallery's Solar Anus series along with Gina Myers, Kate Zambrino, and Gina Abelkop. Zurawski's works include The Bruise, a novel (2008, Fiction Collective 2), a 2011 broadside at The Poetry Project, as well as online sites including Elective Affinities. Minor American is Zurawski's personal blog. About her poetry she has commented: "Tentatively, until I figure out a better way to say what I mean, I would say that I believe in sincerity." Zurawski is currently at work on a new collection. "Conditional poem with lazy fish" and "into thin grass" originally appeared online in ixnay,1999.