Alphabet Year. Devon Miller-Duggan

      Alphabet Year

      Devon Miller-Duggan

      Copyright © 2017 Devon Miller-Duggan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0308-2

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0310-5

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0309-9

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/17/15

      This one’s for Miriam.

      Acknowledgements

      I am grateful to the following journals and their editors for publishing these poems (sometimes with different numbers):

      Apeiron Review, Disorderly Abecedarian 10: Beware

      Birds Piled Loosely, Proper Abecedarian 17: Belief

      Disorderly Abecedarian 18: List

      Proper Abecedarian 18: Divorce

      Disorderly Abecedarian 20: Guide

      Proper Abecedarian 20: HaShoah

      Cider Press Review, Disorderly Abecedarian 3: Blasphemy

      The Cresset, Disorderly Abecedarian 6: Hidden

      Gargoyle, Disorderly Abecedarian 5: Calendar

      Hollins Critic, Disorderly Abecedarian 12: Cup

      Ink & Letters, Disorderly Abecedarian 16: Jive

      Proper Abecedarian 16: Flora

      Kestrel, Disorderly Abecedarian 24: Wedded

      Rain, Party & Disaster Society, Proper Abecedarian 4: Eleven

      Rappahanock Review, Proper Abecedarian 1: Turns

      Proper Abecedarian 6: January

      Red Paint Hill, Disorderly Abecedarian 19: Kisses

      Rock & Sling, Disorderly Abecedarian 4: Kenosis

      Disorderly Abecedarian 8: Theology

      Proper Abecedarian 8: Introversion

      Whale Road Review, Disorderly Abecedarian 2: Return

      White Stag, Proper Abecedarian 7: Drowning

      Proper Abecedarian 21: Tempest

      Proper Abecedarian 23: Cloud

      The Windhover, Disorderly Abecedarian 1: Beach

      My further thanks go to the bag of sand mold letters that started this all; to my husband, Seamus, my first and best reader, always; the crew of Friday Nite Writes; the good people of the Thomas Parker Society Reading in Santa Fe (especially Jeffrey Overstreet for the best response to a poem I am ever likely to enjoy), and the Glen Workshops for being the ground on which these poems found their feet. Marci Rae Johnson is an acute and fearless editor who found an arc I had only vaguely sensed.

      Disorderly Abecedarian 1: Beach

      Querulous weather—rain on the ocean flattening sky—

      indicators shifting breeze to breeze,

      nerving blue beyond the pool—

      voluptuary bubbles at one end, stillness at the other.

      Menace in a kind of white

      obligates nothinging.

      Proposition: lines run—shore, dune, storm fence, grass, sidewalk, street, veins.

      Zones of keeping or tending—

      unfold, unfurl, unwind, unmove, unblur.

      Ribboning sound from a child or gull.

      Choice-broken hearts everywhere anyone older than a child.

      Harvesting rest, breathing in salt.

      Xeric heart unfilled, but sufficed.

      Yenning dries the ground.

      Kilter, off-kilter, on-kilter—presence of absence of welcome.

      Fidgeting in the throat instead of speech

      anatomizes emotion the way a raccoon washes its hands.

      Walk away. Walk toward. Walk over. Walk.

      Blithe as dying.

      Joss for living.

      Syncopy in the sky again—breeze intent, though.

      Grind down into sand this heart. Push iron rod in and wait for lightning, for storm-made glass.

      Love you can dig out with your hands.

      Elision of sympathy and lightning—hard as pyrex hearts—

      damage that pays the tithe—

      torqued branches, wild transparencies.

      Proper Abecedarian 1: Turns

      And fall & the light tasting of good scotch, like

      belief you don’t even need to swallow before it lights your tongue.

      Catching up. Coming back. Cleaning off. It’s okay—you

      dove fingers-first into the blue pool summer. Climb out.

      Ends. Hinges. Folds (mountain, valley). Turning. Summer’s

      fainting from her own heat,

      grating her bare toes on sidewalks, self-abrading for penance.

      Here the light pours like waking, even as it shortens. Dirt

      inherits the leaves it fed.

      Just as after harvesting, it’s good to cut things back to ground.

      Kin to air all summer, your skin remembers separateness.

      Limber all summer, your skin recalls contraction.

      Much presents itself, absents itself—like family or

      nerves shifting sequence—firing or frosting

      or fluttering your fingers, your skin, leaves. Hinges all manifest in skin,

      plain skin against the plain surface of shift—

      quieting the way deer quiet before bending to feed. Air

      rounds on us, carves us a cave to wear,

      so wound about you—

      too hungry for love,

      unknowing what we knew, yet

      voluptuary as eiderdowns,

      weathering the bustle and turn,

      xerosis of leaf and ground, then frost killing rot.

      You can love your skin again because it requires you cover it,

      zealous for keeping close.

      Disorderly Abecedarian 2: Return

      Fainting sky today pulls