Arrow: a poem by Bruce Bond. Number 10 in Volume Three of our Editor’s Series.

Publication:  January 28, 2019 [100 copies]
17 pages
ISBN 978-1-949333-49-7
$ 9.00

Cover art: “A Twilight World” by Dion Zwirner.

Bruce Bond is the author of eighteen books including, most recently, Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan, 2015), Black Anthem (Tampa Review Prize, 2016), Gold Bee (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017), and Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997-2015 (E. Phillabaum Award, LSU, 2017). Three of his books are forthcoming: Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Book Prize, Elixir Press), Frankenstein’s Children (Lost Horse Press), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions). Presently he is a Regents Professor of English at the University of North Texas.

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14.

My mother liked to ask the same questions
              over and over.

                            Like a music box that plays
only when it’s closed.

               When will you be
home? Should I take this pill?

The answer was always a step
               beyond the step in the fog.

                            Pushed or pulled
or both. Like music that way. Or wind.

               The crackle of autumn
against the window.

Do not call her weak. Or curse the temerity
              that affirms no thing.

                             The winded machinery
of hope that sings its one note in the storm.

               To be the unknowing and a thing
apart. A listening.

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• Purchase Arrow here.