poem: A weekly poem, read by the author.

From the Bottom of the Stairs

By Joshua Edwards
Posted Tuesday, March 9, 2004, at 11:37 AM ET

Listen to Joshua Edwards reading this poem


Her voice is coming up like a slow show
tune made famous by its composer's death,

and he's a man dreaming of a play bathed
in lunar light, so cheating on her. The day

is very warm, and then: three telephone
calls saying: the child was bitten, the child

is allergic, the child has died, and they are
so sad that they will set the scene again

with a flower that could not hold the bees'
attention. And a monument fell to pieces

within them. The day gathered them
in its hull, blew a horn, which sounded like

echoed sobbing, and the notion to hold still
was in the air. And they held the air still within

them, as though a moment is something
that leaks from the lungs, and not some

thing that comes to whisper, as it passes
first closely, and then away.




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Joshua Edwards publishes and co-edits a poetry journal, The Canary. His work appears or is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, Skanky Possum, Smartish Pace, Forklift, Ohio, and elswhere.
Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.


To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.
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