Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University

The Palimpsest Review - Volume 10

Palimpsest onLine!'s Professional Writers at Work

H. Kassia Fleisher: "Spinning Miss Stein's Grave"

Todd Davis: "Looking for theLight"

Prudence Grimes: "Writing My Father's Stories"

Jeff Worley: "Tapping the Wellspring of Language"

Ray Petersen: "The Cardinal Trait of the Writer"

Dev Hathaway: "The Art of the Story"

Karen Blomain: Two Poems

Len Roberts: Seven Poems

Len Roberts: Cohoes Theater (PDF Book)

Maria Jacketti: "Objects of Poetry"

Jim Manis: "Struggling to Publish"

Return to Palimpsest onLine!

Sarah Etter: “Concaves”

Marissa Molina: "The Day I Wasn’t There"

Andrew Timberlake-Newell: "Smokie"

Anthony Kocur: "To the Edge"

David Kim: "Young and Perverted"

Ryan Morini: "B – Movie Enthusiast"

Joe Giachero: "Whatever Came First"

Meghan Elliott: "Sound"

Veronika L Daddona: "Driver" and "Lamentia"

Ronell Smith: "The 1988 Holiday Barbie"

Charles Howells: "Bandwagon Patriots"

Andrew Noll: "Ten Feet Behind J.F.K."

Sarah E. Smith: "Autumn Skies"

Daniel Debiec: "A Morning in Missoula" and "into the rain"

Ryan Melling: "Hand in Hand"

Andraleen Zelonis: "Let’s Play"

Kevin Cope: "House Guest"

Becky Liscusky: "I Like Dogs and Frogs" and "You know the pan’s hot"

Amber Shinskie: "Scent of a Cherry Cigar"

This page is maintained by Jim Manis (jdm12@psu.edu)

Last updated July 3, 2004; first published to the web: July 3, 2004.

The Palimpsest Review and Palimpsest onLine! are publications of The Pennsylvania State University. The words and ideas contained within their pages are the property of their authors and cannot be used for any purposes without the authors' specific written consent.

Sarah Etter – Berks

Concaves

Sweet melancholy dissonance
Leaking light and slow
Over mountains of cheeks
And valleys of dimples
Liquid heart strings
Drifting and shifting
Just this once
Just this once
With a promise
To never fail the stability
Again
And eyes closed
Face down and shining
With memories of you
Dancing themselves
Through the logistics of this
Maybe I’m dreaming you
Backwards and back to me
The skin of your ear
In curves and shapes
That I could curl into and sleep for days
On the lullaby of your life
Guarding the entrance
And the exit
Legs dangling in the echo
For a change
And I can almost become
The sound, the silence
The in between
Perched on your preconceptions
While they are twisted and unraveled
Just like me
Just like me
And you will sigh
The wind will push me barely
Tenderly,
Gentle like a suggestion
That never accepts the decline
The concave surrounding
Selecting, saving, salvaging
What is left
Of me

And though I’ve lived
In the minds of so many
None have silenced me
Into blessing
As have you
Like some random miracle
That I stole
From defenseless store shelves
Full of dust and holy reckoning
And while I find you
Here
And myself as well
I find more
I find you just enough
Just enough
Just enough

Sarah Etter's poem appears here with her express written permission and cannot be reprinted or otherwise used without her express written permission.

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