Ars Poetica
Climbing through night, I saw
the neighbor swan
wearing his black Venetian mask
and digging through snow
white plumage—as if, right there,
under the wing, a little door
might teeter open, and scatter his chest
of starlight
out onto the pond. Once,
walking the Long Island sound,
I approached the same kind of bird, but
headless—its stethoscope neck
missing, or maybe tucked
somewhere near the feet. It was
the least graphic thing I had ever seen—
A spare pillow
dipped in sand, licked
by the occasional wave.
The Atlantic behaved
boredly, understanding
the bright pulse
of a dead swan
is the oldest, most overdone poem
known to man. I was a child. I did not muse
as I would now who killed it.
But I swore to never mention
that creature, no
matter how tufted or perfect it was,
in a future
poem. It’s funny how I try
to keep myself from light, how I run
into it regardless, how light must spill
from somewhere—swan or no swan,
door or no door.
RK Fauth is the author of A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees, winner of the Walt MacDonald First Book Prize in Poetry (Texas Tech University Press, 2024), and a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry. Her writing has been published in POETRY Magazine, Poem-a-Day, AGNI, The West Trade Review, Plumwood Mountain Journal, and elsewhere. Fauth’s work has been supported by the Academy of American Poets, The Fulbright Program, Art Omi, The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. She lives in New York City, NY.
Ellen Bass’s most recent book is Indigo (Copper Canyon, 2020). Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. With Florence Howe, she co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks! (Doubleday, 1973), and she co-authored the groundbreaking, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz jails. She teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program and offers online Living Room Craft Talks at ellenbass.com.