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Claudia Emerson

The Bat

We didn’t know what woke us—just something
moving, lighter than our breathing. The world
bound by an icy ligature, our house
 
was to the bat a hollow, warmer cavity
that now it could not leave. I screamed
for you to do something. So you killed it
 
with the broom; I heard you curse as you
swept the air. I wanted you to do it until
you did. I have never forgiven you.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Claudia Emerson...
The Physical Plant as Prologue

Everything here measures: weight,… and everything costs in this seclu… of daughters, the place an ark—its… all of a kind in an archaic, combe… order: straightened teeth, trained…
Posessions

I sent you a list of what I wante… of strangers, or for the fire, the… have handled a dead woman’s posses… them, the clothes still fragrant,… of the body. Or perhaps your lover…
Photographer

It began with the first baby, the… disappearing threshold by threshol… milky above the floor only her hee… the ball of her foot perceived. Th… was the crying; it had a low ceili…
Surface Hunting

You always washed artifacts at the kitchen sink, your back to the room, to me, to the mud you’d tracked in from whatever neighbor’s field had just been plo…
 1
Homecoming

The camera is trained on the door,… in the frame, only the dog sleepin… finally, I see this was to surpris… filming your arrival, the dog’s de… six years distant, can this seem s…
Second Bearing 1919

I have asked him to tell it—how he heard the curing barn took hour… to burn, the logs thick, accustome… to heat—how, even when it was clea… was lost, the barn and the tobacco
Early Elegy: Smallpox

The world has certified itself rid… all but the argument: to eradicate… the small stock of variola frozen, quarantined—a dormancy it has refused, just once, for a woman be…
After the Affair

There was no one to tell, so it se… in the lines of the house, in door… In the late afternoons that follow… what could have been someone knock… beat its body against the living r…
 1
Orchid Anatomy

This evening’s study the anatomy o… the greenhouse glows—jut of glass… of the science building—a small, t… thriving in its humid room. Wearin… lab aprons, they lean over the mis…
Frame, an Epistle

Most of the things you made for me… chest, lapdesk, the armless rocker… away to friends who could use them… be reminded of the hours lost ther… not having been witness to those d…
Artifact

For three years you lived in your… just as it was before she died: yo… portrait on the mantel, her clothe… in the closet, her hair still in t… You have told me you gave it all a…
Animal Funerals, 1964

That summer, we did not simply wal… the valley of the shadow of death;… orchestrating funerals for the ano… found dead: a drowned mole—its sma… still pink—a crushed box turtle, g…
Aftermath

I think by now it is time for the… I imagine the field, the one above… house we rented, has lain in conva… long enough. The hawk has taken ba… above new grass, and the doe again…
The Polio Vaccine, Chatham, Virginia, 1964

It was not death we came to fear b… her other birth, waking remade fro… of that disease. One leg was withe… numb weight behind her, one should… a camel’s—and what did we know of…
Frame: an Epistle

Most of the things you made for me… chest, lapdesk, the armless rocker… away to friends who could use them… be reminded of the hours lost ther… not having been witness to those d…



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