Lamp and Chair

American Poetry Review, The, Jul/Aug 2004 by Grubin, Eve

There's a new sound in the cold trees, delicate,

deliberate

soon water will run down the jagged bark.

Just give me a simple happiness

with a distance-sharer. Books

on a breakfast table, wrinkled napkins.

Raw wind tears through the highest branches.

Lamp and chair. The erotic

inverse of the crumbled house.

EVE GRUBIN is the poetry editor of Lyric, teaches poetry workshops at The New School, and is the program director at the Poetry Society of America.