Poor Claudia published poetry, prose and conversations online and in print from 2009 to 2018.

Sarah Mangold

from Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners

What everyone feels for nature suppose those
feelings The last-named gentleman appears

 

An index of his sensitivity Accommodations of
translation long understood as elegy We feel

 

and pronounce this sunset a kind of microphone

 

Blown all over with pinholes or other holes
Skin is afterward There is no discrete I

 

Each bit of nature landed in one column or
the other Skin beamed down for the apparent

 

bending Iridescent peacock feathers Wings

of certain dragonflies

It was not intended to be in any way sensual

Prairies grass-robed and flower-decked Whose

heart-beat does not quicken Skinning and

dressing Heart swells Fresh charm framed

Delights of wilderness

Only angels can do without skin gestures of remembrance

plead the name be stabilized

between beside captured and cured

hang their harps on willows

 

The failure of the flamingo group their honesty of purpose

Mr. Hornaday kindly put me in possession

of distance of airiness of boughs

of evergreen outfits and hints of preparation

 

We are at liberty to vary attitudes put as little life as possible

in the corners let some room to spare

Dear Sister our sweetheart

authentic replica

facts flora

inner frontiers

illusion of participation

of natural variation

home studies in nature

harbor porpoise

sea grass

and oysters

To send all the skins he wanted

suggestions of stealthy theft

masculinity persistent as a text

rosy finch heart &c. &c.

I kept hold of my departing senses

doubt cast and describer suspected

 

so much to be remembered by hereafter

 

around a pond rendered in glass and wax

 

seasonally incongruous fur phases

Have I been wilderness

Seasonable earthly affections

Gulf wavering honeycomb

O perform our heart

O mouth our coolings

Languishing

Waxed hot in our affections

Wing O generations

Become yourself a contributor to science

It is a hopeless attempt to paint general

 

effects Wings thrown open like

powdered gems Daughters of time

 

Desire to hear the sure accompaniments

of the still orange-tree cocoa-nut fern

 

Naming a multitude of objects

Such elements of scenery

Sarah Mangold

Sarah Mangold is the author of Household Mechanics (New Issues), Electrical Theories of Femininity (Black Radish Books), and the forthcoming Giraffes of Devotion (Kore Press). She is the recipient of a 2013 NEA Poetry Fellowship and lives in Seattle.