Joy Katz Poems

Solicitous of its own business. Not chewable, and never mordant.
How to say a chair as I would say a hand? One looks out
from the brows: wooden, unaltering.
...

is spreading, indefinite at the edges as idea
or a dream escaping.
Words are weary as tow-pound chain.
The rain waits, all lightness and rising;
...

No woman holds her arms like this. A garden must come
up like full-blown crows. A garden of grown-up trees and sawblades.
...

has no alertness. Lying innocently
its paperhood frees it. Paper is a moral rotary.
You can no more object to it than to Switzerland;
...

The purified fleets of nations have pulled in.
Christianized themes read out behind high, aroused doors.
With gladness I soothed your aristocracy.
...

Empty as a sundial.
A square of skin turns outward, a skiff of salt blows neatly
to the corners.
The spears of iris are spoiled, under it, as drunks.
...

Side of steamship and white smoke, black parts beckoning.
As in jump, as in unquiet. Not wasted, save churning over itself.
A dream in the midst and a rolling pin.
...

Smell of jargon, bad things
you say to your husband,
praise and bombs for the orderly house.
...

Unbroken
skim of night.
Headlights elsewhere
...

A tang approaches, like the smell of snow.
Illness like a color deepens-
pale gray, thick-in-a-cloak gray, secret coat silk,
and finally the weight of rough pelts heaped on the bed.
...