Gillian Parrish
from Saturday Poems
Saturday Poem 4
saying you’re sick won’t save you
awkward robot-arm of the garbage truck
now that we live by numbers
set out some honey for the slow improbable bee
feather-fine cloud in the sky in the chest
a crowd listened to a pigeon calling in a girl’s voice
‘special interest aliens’
teach us to care
with the air of another way
Saturday Poem 5
told them I’d take the medicine path
crude oil on the loose from here to Houston
‘with jasmine with juniper with musk and pine’
with offering clouds of cleansing smoke
(soften the jaw)
women sworn in, women swearing, dancing
road home a river of white-gold winter light
down the block a grandma yelling ‘that’s my STRONG girl!’
breathe with what you got
Saturday Poem 6
‘understanding what the land can do’
dream teacher used my breastbone as a microphone
jay call warding a hawk away
call it green new deal or green dream or whatever call it forth
cleanse our boardrooms our courtrooms
cleanse our ruined city water America,
take a knee, a hermit permit to look inside our hearts
he said, first you need savings need to save things
every step alive
Gillian Parrish
Gillian Parrish is the author of two books of poems: of rain and nettles wove and supermoon. Her poems, stories, and essays have been published in various journals as well as in anthologies out from Black Lawrence Press and Wesleyan University Press. On odd holidays she launches issues of spacecraftproject, a journal of poems and stories that also features interviews with artists working with words, sound, movement, paint and pixel, light and land.