Karen Elizabeth Bishop

IRIS

more of me is your body than i know, iris,

doomed flame, bright eye, lip. at night i

hear you speaking in tongues, in syllables

of violet & gold, leaf fricatives, ( ) ( ) ( ).

as if you understood that by morning you

will turn lunatic, limbs wild, ear upon the

hook, screamlike, unblinking, breastflesh.

that speech will soon escape you, like a

small rabbit or like a moon, that the words

won’t form where lips begin, but at the root,

radical, drinking, promised, silent, drunk.

KAREN ELIZABETH BISHOP is a UK/US poet, translator, and scholar. She is the author of the deering hour (Ornithopter Press, 2021) and has work in Lana Turner, New Writing Scotland, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Poetry Northwest. She teaches at Rutgers University, and divides her time between the wilds of New Jersey and Sevilla, Spain.