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Announcements
(screoll down for poetry)

A Supplication For Crows has received a 2024 award from the Delaware Press Association for a poetry book.

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I've been awarded an Individual Artist Opportunity grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.

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I'm honored to be the: 

Poet of the Week

at Poetry Superhighway

March 6-12, 2023

https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com

Recent and upcoming publications.

Your Skin, Wings, The Death o
f Pretense
--Varied Spirits Anthology,
Red Haircrow, ed.
Berlin, April 2023.













Stalker (In the Garden of the Dahlias)
and 4 other poems
just released in
Voices
anthology from Cold River Press.

 
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Poetry

They Only Name Things On Earth

 

I do not ask if there is a god,

where malevolence comes from

why there are stars.

 

In scrutiny, subject

becomes object,

experience consumption.

 

Naming turns mysteries to

commodities, the ethereal

bundled in a blister pack.

 

I could call war menstrual envy,

or count the tears in a

lifetime of loneliness, but

 

I like to leave things

as they are—nameless,

embryonic, enigmatic.

 

Inquiry stains like rust,

identity a cannibal with

boundless thirst for souls.

 

Leave me without speaking,

lover, before your angelic

face has an earthly name.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "They Only Name Things On Earth" A Supplication for Crows. 2023.

Ellos sólo nombran cosas

en la tierra

 

No pregunto si existe un dios,

de donde viene la malevolencia,

por qué hay estrellas.

 

En el escrutinio, el sujeto

se convierte en objeto,

la experiencia el consume.

 

Nombrar convierte los misterios
en
mercancías, lo etéreo

envuelto en un blíster.

 

Podría llamar a la guerra envidia
menstrual
o contar las lágrimas

de una vida de soledad, pero

 

me gusta dejar las cosas

como son—sin nombre,

embrionarias, enigmáticas.

 

La investigación mancha como
el óxido
la identidad un caníbal con

sed ilimitada de almas.

 

Déjame sin hablar

amante, antes de que tu angelical

rostro tenga un nombre terrenal.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Ellos sólo nombran cosas

en la tierra"ed próximo en" Una Súplica para los Cuervos. 2023..

I Do Not Want To Think About Familiar Things

 

Insomnia binds me to

waking life, I shuffle in

shackles to a cell of day that

has no window on dreams,

to inmates with identical,

inscrutable faces.

 

On the F train, a girl

with a Hello Kitty pack

looks at me furtively.

She’s about her age.

When she looks again

I catch her eyes, we smile.

 

I wonder, what talisman

is safe in her bag?

A cheese sandwich,

like I used to make?

A book that warns not to

give a muffin to a moose?

 

I do not want to think

about things out of sequence.

Gone to Goodwill, her pink
size 3 sneakers, green dinosaur

socks. A dad, fleeing

somewhere nowhere South.

 

All that remains is

her Princess toothbrush,

alone in a red plastic cup

pointing to heaven,

waiting for pixie hands

that never come.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "They Only Name Things On Earth" A Supplication for Crows. 2023.

The Missing

 

The missing aren’t missing.

They are there, with themselves.

We are the missing.

 

Empty chair

at the dinner table

missing.

 

Unused outfield

glove for her birthday

missing.

 

The disappeared

in shallow graves

missing.

 

Monochrome faces on

my milk carton

missing.

 

I imagine them in endless   

catacombs deep below the

cobblestones on my street,

Each crouched in their corner of

the labyrinths, guardians of

vacant stares from hollow skulls.

 

Once I wanted to be missing,

to walk naked from everything

and hitchhike to Kamloops.

 

I would sleep in a treehouse,

content to live on pine needles

and kukicha twig tea.

 

I realize I don’t need a lean-to

or catacombs to disappear,

I can do that right here,

 

In small increments,  

barely noticeable enough

to be missed.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "They Only Name Things On Earth" A Supplication for Crows. 2023.

An Inventory of Crows

 

I collect the calls of crows.

In my basement they

hang from mildewed

shelves like bundles

of thyme, others

like dusty jugs of wine

glinting in shards of light

from a casement window.

 

I’ve kept them all,

the ones that called me

back when I nearly

fell off the edge

of the burning earth,

the chorus of a murder

that swaddled me and

raised me to heaven.

 

Each caw cataloged

with manilla tags and

jute twine, a library

of the music in my

creaking blood,

a harmony of flight

into the inky night.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "An Inventory of Crows" is forthcoming in A Supplication for Crows poetry collection, winter 2023.

Un inventario de cuervos

 

Colecciono las canciones de los cuervos.

En mi sótano cuelgan

de estanterías mohosas

como manojos de tomillo, otros

como polvorientas jarras de vino

brillando en fragmentos de luz

de una ventana.

 

Los he guardado todos,

las que me llamaban

cuando casi

caí desde el borde

de la tierra ardiente,

el coro de un asesinato

que me envolvió y

me elevó al cielo.

 

Cada graznido catalogado

con etiquetas de manila e

hilo de yute, una biblioteca

de música en mi

sangre crujiente,

la armonía del vuelo

hacia la noche de tinta.

 

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Un inventorio de cuervos" ed próximo en" Una Súplica para los Cuervos. colección de poesía, invierno, 2023

I Moved Here So Audre Lorde

Would Be My Neighbor

 

 

I built my home

in a taciturn chestnut tree

so close to the end of earth

that its mahogany eyeballs

sometimes roll over

the edge, toppling to extinction.

 

It is held up by stanchions

that get their strength

from the grace of weakness,

like the pneumatized bones

of chickadee wings.

 

At dawn, I wake to green

sounds that erase dreams.

I watch chestnuts plummet

to their death, their spiny

anger skin splits, revealing

glimmering spheres of adulation.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "I Moved Here So Audre Lorde Would Be My Neighbor" first appeared in Argotist. March 21, 2023.

supplication

 

when i burned your photo
it was not in effigy.
there was no more room
for your image
in my heart,
occupied now with
navigating white-knuckle
rapids of rivers
flowing backward.
Only the ashes fit.
they float
like orphan eyelashes
into retreating crevices
of memory.
as i held the glossy
corner to the flame,
a supplication to time:
erode this anguish
as slowly, as deliberately
as egyptian granite.
deep, to reveal
veins of gold.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Supplication" first appeared in Argotist. March 21, 2023.

Crows

 

call me back from reverie,
entreaties echoing from
dangling drops of rain
to reach me.

if I awaken, I can dream
of black barbs of feathers,
follow each to a bony quill,
then deeper yet,

into inky thews. Entwined in
sinew, my heart canters as
wings thrash into cawing
freedom of oblivion.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Crows" first appeared in Argotist. March 21, 2023.

What Remains

 

The ocean returned
to claim the sleeping
in plain day,

foretold to me
in dreams of
prescient dragon flies.

Bargello veins pulsed
in cellophane wings,
droning in and out of

shafts of light,
framed by private
nebulas of dust.

There are still remnants
of magic free from
weighted words,

and cell towers poke
from a new sea, a landing place
for blue dragon flies.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "What Remains" first appeared in Argotist. March 21, 2023.

The Isle of Grand Manan

                                           For Stina

 

We arrive by sea, like the Passamaquoddy,

where tides flood and fall a fathom a day.

In the harbor, porpoises stitch mirrors

into the dark sea while albatross float

like marionettes tangled in the wind.

 

It’s early, and dew covers the blackberries

we collect for breakfast. In her cabin,

Willa Cather’s ghost joins us at the table,

as tapping branches echo the tentative

clacking of her Oliver typewriter.

 

Together, we smell the sea through

windows dulled by salt, pausing to watch

the rocky islands, white with scat. Puffins

linger there, minnows dangling from their rainbow

beaks like odd socks on a clothesline.

 

The air is heavy with the odor of smokehouses

where herring hang from poles, prisoners in green

uniforms, sentenced to a slow kippering. They are

the hapless quarry of generations who heave

their nets, a thousand amber eyes staring back.

 

Along the cliffs, we watch right whales

lumber below, sentinels of a hundred unnamed

wrecks and the bones of the forgotten,

entombed in coral. Our path follows the footsteps

of Cather, Audubon, and stranded privateers.

 

We board the ferry in the rain.

On the Bay of Fundy, the tiny ship glides

up and down the waves like a steel toboggan.

Alone on the deck, I watch the last cliffs sink away.

The waves breaking on the bow seem to say:

 

Don’t change.

Don’t change.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "The Isle of Grand Manan" first appeared in Delaware Bards Poetry Review. March 1, 2023. 

Ovation

Your hands lure damask notes

from the ebony of your violin,

nuzzle a tiger sealed in shellac.

Hands that ignite skin,

exsanguinate lemons.

Wide to swaddle a child’s tears,

insect-like lacemakers.

 

You fold them, a chalice.

to cup moonlight blood.

It sifts through,

confetti settles,

consecrates

my belly.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Ovation" first appeared in The Poetry Superhighway.  March, 2023. 

Pa Moop

Tonight, I sleep in a Lahu hut, 
outside a thousand sounds 
for every listener. The moon 
is beautiful but it has no self-nature. 
I have no place to go i
n this universe, 
but I will stay a while. 
Time neither passes
nor endures, 
tomorrow will come without my help. 
The rooster crackles at dawn 
but no sound comes forth. 
After all have spoken, 
only silence remains. 

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Pa Moop" first appeared in Anak Sastra Literary Journal. February 1, 2023. 

Way Home

wander aimlessly, 
     a child scuffling  
     through the streets 
of Chiang Rai. 

 

Sounds and aromas  
     move through me 
     like woven bamboo 
passing this way and that. 

 

A stray dog appears 
      I trade my lunch 
      for a smile, 
wagging hairless tail. 

 

Even the sun must yield; 
      the restless heat 
      begins to fade 
as if saying ‘enough done.’ 

 

Luckily, 
      my sandals 
      know the way home. 

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Way Home" first appeared in Anak Sastra Literary Journal. February 1, 2023. 

Progenitor

 

Bones sleep deep

beneath my driveway.

Their minerals leach into the

water I drink.

But the memories are gone.

Before horses they held a child.

Her bones are there too.

Please, stop it all and

let me off.

No wind skims,

no photons penetrate.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Progenitor" first appeared in The Edge of Humanity Magazine. February 5, 2023. 

pink

 

that succulent

you gave me

on my birthday

the one with the

pink flowers

that dropped

mid-bloom

on that ruinous day

in may

just surprised me

with a single

ruby blossom

that makes me

think you’re

okay?

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "pink" first appeared in The Edge of Humanity MagazineJanuary 30, 2023. 

The Seduction of Winter 

 

Autumn leave affably,

               make room for the majesty

of bare trees, their slender

               fingers will prick the gray sky.

Welcome the hesitant

               snow that blows in threads

across the sidewalk, patterns

               a lacemaker would envy.

I’ve pined for you, Winter.

               You comfort me as a lover,

your silver robes silently trailing

               as you exit the bedroom, sweeping

the moonlight from the dusty floor.

 

Can you stay forever?

 

We’ll watch chickadees crouching

               inside my footprints in the snow,

splatters of cardinals, and robins

               that didn’t go, seduced by holly

berries swollen with ruby amrita.

               At night I’ll share tea and firewood,

a threadbare Icelandic blanket,

               a loft freshly smudged with sweetgrass.

And in the morning, omelets

               with blanched nettles from the riverbank.

 

No, you will leave me for another year.

 

I will count each day, through

               the clamor of yellow crocuses

and the acid burn of summer.

               I will pace the widow’s walk

of autumn with my spyglass,

               waiting for your white sails

to float from the horizon.

               Together again, we will whirl,

dervishes in a vortex of silk

               and alabaster, snow drifts

that meld in the wind, united

               effortlessly for a brief season

until we melt under a brilliant sky.

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "The Seduction of
Winter"
first appe
ared in the The Weekly Avocet.
January 1, 2023. Vol. 526.

Conjure

For those who I have loved, I cannot know
if time has been so fair or cruel to me.
Have thoughts of me just faded long ago,
or held me tenderly in memory?
At night I peel back the waning layers
and coax their voices sweetly to their tongues,
to resurrect the songs of muted players,
the notes unplucked and chords we could have strummed.
The faded faces where their eyes once glowed
stare back from every shadow on my wall.
I’d give up all I’ve hoped and all I’ve known,
if their sighs whispered now and let me fall.
Outside the chains of time their love is free,
but do they ever yearn to conjure me?

©2023 Dana Ravyn. "Conjure" first appeared in the Sparks of CalliopeJanuary 1, 2023. 

Haiku #137

startled by a loon,

an empty mind

suddenly has room for wood smoke

2023 Dana Ravyn. First appeared in the Haiku Journal2021. Vol. 68.

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