Poetry of Jared Stanley > Woodland Pattern Book Center

Woodland
Pattern™

Book Center

Jared Stanley

Jared Stanley is the author of Book Made of Forest, which won Salt Publishing's Crashaw Prize in 2008. He also wrote the chapbooks The Outer Bay (Trafficker Press), I Something Scott Inguito You (Scantily Clad Press) and co-wrote In Fortune (Dusie Kollectiv). His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Mary, Realpoetik, and Likestarlings. With Lauren Levin and Catherine Meng, he edits the annual magazine Mrs. Maybe. He was born in Maricopa County, Arizona, raised in Alameda County, California, and currently lives in Merced County, California, where he teaches at the University of California, Merced.

Just Like Poor Tom's Hair

Jared Stanley

Arcadia
you have a moon
that you are made of

moon grey
and copse-color
a far gauze
lunaire, lunaire
motley with skin gleams
mere in its shitfulness

like Poor Tom's hair
a bric-a-brac attempt
a glint

to hide or rest
in the undergrowth.

White flag or heal-all,
you send me
kisses made of no

because I'm made of money
and don't care what the night is for
in the capacious branch shadows.

A figured owl in the teeth
of mama nature's last laugh.

Moon,
you can't win.
You're wallpaper,
a head on the ramparts,
or a compass of hinges
in a city's sky.

Free, free, free—
we are made of fire
and you are
made of cheese.

Home ~ About Us ~ Membership ~ Bookstore ~ Gallery Info ~ Archives ~ Workshops ~ Links ~ Niedecker