Emily Pittinos


Orphan, Lissome in the Dust Storm

The earth lives for the earth alone. Despite

implying otherwise, I can’t imagine myself

 

as my only purpose. But, as I’ve conceded, if it’s not in you,  

it’s not in you. Stormgate; storm drain.

 

The earth lives for the earth, alone; I don’t claim that way of being, but

I’ve conceded, if it isn’t in you, it isn’t in you. Weeping cherry;

 

chokecherry. The earth lives for the earth.

Alone, I don’t claim a purpose. But if it’s not in you, it’s not in you

I’ve conceded.

Orphan, Lissome in the Dust Storm

Whatever the tint of living may be today—pale-pale blue,

an emphatic gold—I already flail in the possibility of its end, too

 

strung out on fear to admire its luster or dust.

This kind of pain feels more like waking

than waking itself—

 

and any (hateful) moment concerned only with light (its presence,

its leave-taking) so much less urgent than loss, or the threat of loss.

Orphan, Lissome in the Dust Storm

I was first blush: narcissus up on the edge of the sill: was cactus-wren as window-strike: bird as burst bag: bird breaking its own bones: was flock unfolding: double helix to desert: was arid tundra, not actually empty: was coax and ruin: was garden and gun: was fawn in a frenzy who spooked the bouquet: I caught in nodding fronds at dusk: not sunlight, but: growing lighter, easier prey

Orphan, Lissome in the Dust Storm

Pathetic, really, I say on a day

of which it takes the entirety to wake.

 

Nothing’s as I left it—was the wall always this powdery blue?

I wait for what the dawn might do.


Emily Pittinos is a Great Lakes poet and essayist currently teaching in Boise, Idaho. An Associate Editor for Poetry Northwest, Pittinos has received support from Vermont Studio Center and from Washington University in St. Louis, where she served as the Senior Fellow in Poetry. Her recent work appears, or will soon appear, in Denver Quarterly, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, The Adroit Journal, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.