The Cow, The Milk, The Lineage
by Ed Kaplan
* * * * *
Ed Kaplan came ashore in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Since then, his work has been published
in well over a hundred magazines and journals – as well as books including Alvin (1974, Triton
Press, Boulder Creek, CA), Seraphics (1980, Avalon Editions, Oxford), & Pancratia (1983, Swamp
Press, Oneonta, NY). Visit http://edpicasso.blogspot.com for a more extensive bibliography.
“The Cow, the Milk, The Lineage” appears in the Online Library with the author’s permission
Discover more Ed Kaplan poetry at http://tableofthepermanent.blogspot.com
The Cow, The Milk, The Lineage (by Ed Kaplan)
09 Sunday Aug 2009
Posted in 2000s, American, Kaplan (Ed), Writing
shadows fluttering like worms
a whiff of
a charm of smoke
mumbling over a pool of blood
must walk on a slippery stone
guarded by a vine
undetachable these things in a gourd
from which it grows arms legs
the semblance of matter
in its bottle of fate
our memories hunt in such regions
the barnacles on the brain’s polished hull
the splinters of our lives
their tails in all the
places of burials of
all such pleats in the larger skin
those folds which you throw off
shaking a sheet
so it will be unwrinkled
webs grow there
what you
in your gullet know must be food
hisses like a train alive on a rock face
bores through
scaterring dust
is light
is the wind
hanging in the wind
