Editor’s notes: In this week’s Poetry Corner, we feature the work of Priscilla Becker’s second book of poems, “Stories That Listen,” which is newly out from Four Way Books. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Open City, The Paris Review, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Verse, and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, among others. She teaches poetry at Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and in her apartment.
NUMBERLESS HAND SERIES
I thought of a paralysis
a stiffening of the ligaments
so that the hand looked
in a shock. At first I only
mourned the loss of curl
around my coffee cup, the warmth
within my palm.
But soon I thought of other
horror, and also of the way that it
occurs—in increments, a segment
here or there.
I’ve never seen it whole.
BLUE STATUARY
The songs wore out; they rusted
the radio. The singers began to die.
I left my toenails at the beach, hoping
they would grow another body.
I would return with a better,
more expressive face.
I loved it when you said my name.
When you didn’t, I listened
to the sounds the world made.
The trees especially injured me,
though they wouldn’t have known.
When the wind arrives, it upsets them.
I would return with sand in my hair.
The silence, I expected.
WORDS ABOVE A POEM
If I tell another
language, watch its
blonde eyebrows quake, its
impassive face
My simple phrases, rudimentary
hands pointing away
You will think
I can be fooled
I chose a mountain
place. Mineral cures, mine
baths, vapor caves.
I speak in fog
RETRACTION OF VOW
It’s easier now, removed
from the temporary
scaffolding of your bones
besides, there was something
unreliable and I never walked
entirely below. It is an average day,
perhaps a birthday of someone
neither young nor old
