Emily Rosko

THE LENGTHS

after Robert Creeley’s “I Keep to Myself Such Measures”

 
For as long as I could I kept quiet, long
as I could kept a stone’s weight
centered inside. There was no pain
like the pain planted there: set

off, moss-webbed markers keeping
pace the count. Became so
that language unhinged at each
letter. Became so a body

of nerves stretched between ferocity
and numbness. The brain’s unbranching
tree-form. Jagged flight like the razor-thin
wasps. Breath a sinkhole.

No one could tell me when I turned
into something beyond description.
I held on to no forgetting
until finally all bracing gave.

EMILY ROSKO is the author of Weather Inventions (Akron, 2018); Prop Rockery (Akron, 2012); and Raw Goods Inventory (Iowa, 2006), and is the editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (Iowa, 2011). She teaches at the College of Charleston.