It’s not natural. Not night,
the hole inside the hole.
This way, that way.
No way.
Can you keep going?
The sun keeps going.
Old, young,
taking your footsteps.
Tomorrow someone will ask,
“Is this what she wanted?”
And someone will answer
“She passed this way
under the weightless wash of sky.”
— Patricia Carlin
Patricia Carlin's books include Second Nature, QUANTUM JITTERS and ORIGINAL GREEN all from Marsh Hawk Press. She has published widely in journals and anthologies such as Boulevard, BOMB, Verse, American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, POOL, The Literary Review, The Manhattan Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency; and she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and VCCA. She teaches literature and poetry writing at The New School, and she co-edits the poetry journal Barrow Street.