By Hailey Leithauser
The heat so peaked tonight
the moon can’t cool
a scum-mucked swimming
pool, or breeze
emerge to lift the frowsy
ruff of owls too hot
to hoot, (the mouse and brown
barn rat astute
enough to know to drop
and dash) while
on the bunched up,
corkscrewed sheets of cots
and slumped brass beds,
the fitful twist
and kink and plead to dream
a dream of air
as bitter cruel as winter
gale that scrapes and blows
and gusts the grate
to luff
the whitened ashes from the coal.
Source: Poetry (December 2009)
Poet Bio
Hailey Leithauser originally took poetry workshops as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, but stopped writing for almost 20 years while she pursued a career as a librarian. Standing in front of a van Gogh painting during a visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., she was inspired to return to writing, and eventually developed her own form, the small sonnet. Writing dense, compact poems packed with slant and full rhymes has taught Leithauser “to really exploit what you can do in a poem that is only 70 syllables long and that relies on rhyme to really carry it through,” she told the Takoma Voice in an interview. Born in Florida, Leithauser lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.
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aria hangs in) en-
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Of Tribulation, these are They,
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Pained, permanent
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Exposed
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a mouth
all teeth
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