In Taos
by Anis Shivani
I met a green-skirted woman named Hope in Taos.
She gave me ladles to pick up scattered dreams.
She said my childhood was one of wonder.
She said I am a beast in the offing, and be glad for it.
There was a clock wrapped around its white skin,
and when the horses arcing in the clean blue air halted their stride,
I could read its symbols reading time back.
There was in Taos a villager by the ski slopes familiar
with how women fall off thin-lipped cliffs
as though all the mutinies since Rome were a joke.
There was in Taos during Easter vacation
a resurrection witnessed by painters feeding on something
other than air, and we loved how the men ran to the end.
A picture is worth less than a thousand words.
Since this is true, we carry our houses on our backs.
The rivers run on time, all the news sings truth.
Anis Shivani's poem is from his manuscript, My Tranquil War, which is ready for publication. Other poems appear in TLS, Meanjin, Verse, Subtropics, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.