Sinking into the Leopard Pillow by Gillian Conoley

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend December 2, 2015   Sinking into the Leopard Pillow   Gillian Conoley

I threw out everything that didn’t give me a spark   and hung all the whites on the table.   Greens and deep dirt browns and grays.   The sensory titillations of the day   entered each limb’s phantom collapse and gait, tremor are you there?   See until you are gone and there is only what you are seeing.   Just trying that meant yesterday.   What to do today. Falls the shadow.            Copyright © 2015 by Gillian Conoley. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I was reading through one of the unlined, black-covered, artist sketchbooks I’ve scribbled in since I first began to write. The books are very messy, mostly fragments in all directions, but when I came upon these lines, they were all by themselves, on one page. I read the page and thought, ‘that’s a poem,’ and then all at once the title came to me. This poem reminds me how companionable writing is, how it’s always there, if you’re patient enough, and remember to look for it.” —Gillian Conoley   Gillian Conoley is the author of Peace (Omnidawn Publishing, 2014). She teaches at Sonoma State University and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Poetry by Conoley   Peace (Omnidawn Publishing, 2014) "As If I Am Someone Else" by Douglas Piccinnini "In Whoever’s Hotel Room This Is" by Matt Rasmussen "Untitled [Is is]" by Srikanth Reddy Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038