dawn lonsinger is currently living among aspen colonies in Salt Lake City, where she is managing editor of Western Humanities Review and is working towards a doctorate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Utah. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, The Massachusetts Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, Versal, Drunken Boat, LIT, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere; and her chapbook, the linoleum crop, was chosen by Thomas Lux as the recipient of the 2007 Jeanne Duval Editions Chapbook Contest.

There Will Come Soft Ruin
after Sarah Teasdale

that we were present in the gone-ing, dawn
wiping away the green night vision, the pawn

shops shattered with lust. that we hunkered down
in our couches, hit play, skimmed the day’s drown

ings. that the hydrangeas silently hemorrhaged truce
while we mechanized, were thrilled about the cruise.

that the fences hum and deepen, become zones,
the canaries—cage-float—dimming the neon bones

in our 10mm thick tanks & skins—shark, combatant.
that the singing is singed, mothers picking off lint,

nerves. that the grounds will come, rise up around us
like a gown of inescapable mass, mudslide couture, fuss

of forensics—rigor: we the swallow, tremulous fragment.