Thunderous
The sound of a tree
growing in fast forward—
a hundred
years in thirty
seconds—is a brief
recital of rasp
& squeak & groan,
the sound of sheath
after added sheath.
It sounds like ice
breaking up
in the spring. It sounds
like an avalanche. Try
to hear the same
of the entire woods,
then of the continent,
then of the world.
Try to be deafened
by life. I want
to be able to hear
in thirty seconds
all the decades
of my own heart
beating, a rattle
that grows louder
then quickly subsides.
I want to hear
the sprouting
of leaves in the spring,
their crackling
in the fall, all of it
so thunderous
you can’t distinguish
the loss
of any one thing.
Breath
My breath swirling
the room like
a pollen-drunk bee,
I let the air
slip out
in as slow
a stream as possible,
because that helps
me understand
strength. I’ve yelled
& slammed my fist
in my palm,
so I already know
what weakness is.
You can spend
all afternoon
trying to figure out
what version of collapse
wants you more
than all the others.
Let us learn
the way cries
inherit our breath,
the way 1,000
facets of song
can inhabit
the mouth.
Ledger
This body is a container
for a certain number
of breaths, a certain
number of kisses.
The horizon of your skin
makes gravity a myth,
releases every trace
of music stored
in my muscles.
One day all my thoughts
will narrow to those
I had in the womb,
the world’s vast
nomenclature stripped
down to basic
human need.
I know it’s probably
written on air, but
somewhere there’s a ledger
that tells us
how much of our breath
we’ve given to dispute,
how much to song.
Remind me again
how not to be
a howl on a string.
Stephen Cramer’s first book of poems, Shiva’s Drum, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press. Bone Music, his sixth, won the Louise Bogan Award. His most recent is The Disintegration Loops, which was a finalist for the Vermont Book Award. He is also the editor of Turn It Up! Music in Poetry from Jazz to Hip-Hop. Cramer’s work has appeared in journals such as The American Poetry Review, African American Review, The Yale Review, and Harvard Review. An assistant poetry editor at Green Mountains Review, he teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont and lives with his wife and daughter in Burlington.