Rae Gouirand | Rough Sequence

Rough Sequence. Poems by Rae Gouirand. Number 25 in our Keystone Series.

Publication:  September 17, 2023 [100 copies]
29 pages
ISBN 978-1-960693-05-1
$12.00

[ cover image: Caren Halvorsen ]

A queer poet working in both verse and prose, Rae Gouirand is the author of two collections of poetry, Glass is Glass Water is Water (Spork Press, 2018) and Open Winter (winner of the Bellday Prize,  Bellday Books, 2011); the chapbooks Little Hour (winner of the Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest, Swan Scythe Press, 2022), Jinx (winner of the Summer Kitchen Competition, Seven Kitchens Press, 2019) and Must Apple (winner of the Oro Fino Competition, Educe Press, 2018); and a short work of nonfiction, The History of Art (winner of the Open Reading Competition, The Atlas Review, 2019). A leader in community-based teaching, she leads several long-running independent workshops in northern California and online, including her cross-genre workshop Scribe Lab, and lectures in the Department of English at UC-Davis.

Thousands

We do not call it carrying, or spreading,
though what lies before us carries and spreads—

the tide goes back out over the morning,
draws back over countless tunneling feet.

We call it nameless, the name assigned
what is first edge, then tide to water body,

then line calling churn, then minute travel,
the labor of individual bivalves through

the heaviest sand, the most fine,
working towards some place beneath the churning

where fact might lie, in all the weight
of water pulling back this ground.

We do not say seeking, we do not say
looking for some place closer to the center

beneath the convex surface of the planet,
the intelligence of the elements,

we do not say for their name
thousands upon thousands, which they are,

those milky purples and wracked blues.
We sink a little, standing among. We say

we do not know what to call the scattering
salted hem of the shore garment, its endless

increasing work, standing wobbly on the curve
of the surface of the planet, gravity in our knees.

[ thanks to Ethel Zine for first publishing this poem ]