Jehanne Dubrow

The Naturalist [After Rain, the Dome of the Capitol]

 

After rain, the dome of the capitol

resembles a shell washed ashore.

I want to add it to my collection,

rub the grit from its spire, polish

its apex to a bleached sheen.

It is a lovely specimen. I lift it

to my ear, listening for voices

like a murmuring of sea, the talk

that spirals late into the night.

I will store it in a cabinet alongside

a thicket of coral branches, pale

as mourning, and all varieties

of lightning whelks, oysters

hinged like doors. The city

is littered with calcified surfaces,

rooftops glistening and nacreous.

Look at this fine example—

spined to the touch, protecting

itself, but at its opening

such soft coloration, pink as tender,

unprotected skin. I want to give

a Latin name to this species

of contradiction hidden in the sand.

I want to label everything I find.

Still Life with Oysters, a Silver Tazza, and Glassware

Willem Claesz Heda,

Oil on wood, 1635

The days are brief and shadowy. They pass                       

like light across the angles of a plate,                  

like wine or water from a broken glass,                          

 

like lemon mist. The days are formed from brass, 

discolored easily. Enjoyed too late,                                  

the days are brief and shadowy—they pass            

 

like oysters down a throat, a silver mass            

of salt. The days are difficult to sate.                               

Like wine or water from a broken glass,            

 

they slip between the cracks, fill each crevasse,       

abhorring space. They stain or consecrate.                        

The days are brief and shadowy. They pass.                        

 

And nothing hinders time, not wealth or class                           

or sharpened knives. The seasons coruscate                        

like wine or water from a broken glass,                          

 

pearlescent glimmer of a shell, the crass                         

magnificence of gold. Begemmed, ornate,                        

the days are brief, and shadowy they pass                        

like wine or water from a broken glass.  

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine poetry collections, including most recently Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021), and two books of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019) and Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022). Her third book of nonfiction, Exhibitions: Essays On Art & Atrocity, will be published by University of New Mexico Press in 2023. Her writing has appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.