Zach Savich

I Lapse

A man on whom some snows no longer fall

I could polish the boards until they blossom again

Cut stems suspended in a vase,
The eyes

Cut stems suspended
In a blue and quartz-planed vase

Also and Always

But also: here is a late love poem, in the style of this fire-escape they painted through the
best they could, so yellow slashes the siding. Chestnuts you can break by hand, against
other chestnuts in your hand.
On the hazed lawn one tosses leaves saved or found unbrowned beneath some
fallen thing. A minor, mythic re-enactment of fall I’d nevertheless call beautiful, as the
sadly elaborate texturing of a hall can make plain notes, briefly, orchestral.

Always and Now

And another thing: the first globes were clay orbs. Sailors affixed new continents by
thumbing a percent of a sphere’s core out and pressing a lobe of land, or pinched
mountain, or antelope.
Now past this field where they rest anything until there’s enough and auction it.
Ladders lean out second-level windows. Day passing out. Leaflets.
The smallest strip beside the house: a garden.

Zach Savich is the author of four books of poetry, including Century Swept Brutal (Black Ocean, 2014), and a book of prose, Events Film Cannot Withstand (Rescue Press, 2011). His work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Open Award, the Omnidawn Chapbook Award, and other honors. He teaches in the BFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, and co-edits Rescue Press’s Open Prose Series.