Poem for the Weekend: Gjertrud Schnackenberg

 

The poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg was born in Washington state and studied at Mount Holyoke College, where she won the first of many poetry awards. Best known for her masterful use of prosody and blank verse, Schnackenberg's most recent book of poetry, Heavenly Questions, was an elegiac work written after the illness and death of her husband, the philosopher Robert Nozick. You can watch her read a poem from that collection here.

Signs

by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Threading the palm, a web of little lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tongues, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out, like imprints on a bed,

In signs that can't be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely open mouth,
Like telegrams, the gathering of crowds -

The plane's X in the sky, spelling disaster;
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly's panicked scribbling on the air.