Airports always appear
far away or covered
in cellophane,
and planes stand

ready to leap. I circle
back to a thing, back
to my memory of it,
back to the square

city and metal rivers,
back to the precise
rendering of the blue
print. At thirtythousand feet

my fingernail blots
out the Alps, the Rhine
creases my hand.
Four engines throw me

towards the past which waits
quietly like velcro,
like something without echo,
like a wave stalled in mid-break.


Pilgrimage

I tell lies
in order to hope
that I can visit
the grave of a fish
whose eye watches me
through the flowers I hold
in the usual way.

Oh, the messages of flowers
are tiring, the fish gapes sleepily.
Whoever says "rose" bores
the flesh which is confused
by clothes.

The flowers wilt and the sleeping one
waits for lightning
resembling ideas. I wait
for a new year, a green, minty house
in a landscape of invisible glass
that I can decorate, without seasons,
without pictures, while the ice crawls
up my legs. I eat the ice with lust
and revulsion, and swallow
without the courage
to live in my outer skin
and to be content
in the green of my lap.


Tell Him of Things

The doves of the Palazzo
strut like the Medici, turning
in squares and circles,
checking the cracks for bread.
On July 17, a cat
tail snaking to the ground
closes in. People gather.
A blind man
cane tapping a nervous Morse
voids all bets.

At twelve o'clock sharp
fountains ignite
and hurl sparrows and doves
still wet from their morning bath
into the chestnut trees.

Claudia K. Grinnell



Claudia K. Grinnell was born and raised in Germany. She now makes her home in Monroe, Louisiana, where she teaches English at Northeast Louisiana University. Her poems have appeared in numerous print and electronic publications.