h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

ELIZABETH LINDSEY ROGERS

A ROAD IN THE SKY

It wouldn’t be held—
this notion, slipknot 

spring—park that pushed 
its own banks, spilled vines 

over the lookout. O North
I’ve never understood, capricious 

cloud and gaze, lush 
and then snow, that snap-

dragon give & take. But we were warm 

a moment, and still on 
our backs, where winter grass questioned 

the margins of skin, and trees tossed 
dark like paper cut-outs, or lace that ripped 

if spoken of too soon. 
I am the screen she said, on which 

you throw your passion, 
as if I’d rendered her 

a level, plane to call 
an interruption. If that, then 

what was my language? Please, please: 

raw color without 
conduit, the buttercups’ 

fevered form. Perhaps it’s true 

that what had drawn me 
to her, at first, was reflection: narcissus 

eye on eye, dart pressed 
to dart.  Collar turned back 

when she allowed me 
to part it, let my hand 

be the bearing 
against—visible, or not—whatever cyan 

might be crossed.  In that pivot 

from day to black, a blinking jet 
traced an axis above us, and I said 

to her, the pilot’s 
daughter: cut the veil,  even the sky 

feels owned.  How easily 

she lifted the aqua hem 
of my dress, but scolded 

when I moved 
closer, etched my face

into her skin. This was the map: my willing 

mouth parted, tasting wild 
yonder, her hair’s bitter oat.

SMOKEHOUSE WHERE THE HEART SHOULD BE
After Lorna Simpson’s Counting, three vertical photographs and silkscreened captions

Bullet-shaped, its one dark door 
she padlocks, wrought or cast 
iron—the key not fashioned
after the house’s, no lace 
cuts like a closed parasol.  
Instead, functional brass, a tool 
for surgery.  The carcasses 
hooked and hung for weeks. 
She was hungry enough for any organ.

And as the smoke grew a sheath, she watched 
her head disappear.  Lips were the last 
to fade.  If she counted backwards
from where she entered, the ritual 
wheeze and cough lessened its grip. 
Had her mouth still been, she would’ve 
lifted an arm to cover it. 
Children weren’t allowed here. They crawled 
like beetles, low enough to see.
	
	   Where the womb should be, a braid 
	   wound itself to an oval.  
	   25 twists: 50 locks: nine to one: 
	   she’d counted some extra 
	   stitches into her dress, 
	   re-divided cornmeal and grease 
	   into smaller and smaller portions. 
	   One hand against the apron.  That was truth: 
	   follicles smelted to beads, strung and strung
to the hollow sphere of a child.
There was nothing she couldn’t
count.  Every baby was a number 
drawn with the same hooks and angles.
By lamplight she’d oil and comb 
knot by knot. Fashion was this
fishbone, inverse of the rosary: 
she’d always prayed by winding 
her way back towards the root.

人/ λ :A Redshift

Rén: (人): (Mandarin) man, person, people, someone else

Lambda ( λ ): Eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, used in mathematical functions, 
to represent wavelengths, growth rates, and the concept of unity, among other meanings.
	
	
A single person, the body’s
pictograph.  A human standing up	                                     人

after hours of lying down.  
All night on the train

we slept a slow arrow 			                                                    人
through darkness, and in morning 

Chinese discovered me: carrot-			
headed, unaccompanied. 
			                                      			 	人
Are you a person? I         	            	
was asked, meaning					
		
one: are you alone.  
I was.  It’d been a half-year 

since I had another person	         	 		人

(lying down) and yet 
I’d been brushed 

by thousands:  										 
crowned with dynamite’s 			

wick, standing in 	                             		                  λ				
for many, the People’s Republic   	 		

of population.  Not an inch			
in any room, but out the window 

we saw thirty-six hours 
of next-to-		

nothing—the Mongolian border

grass shifting, wavering			        					λ

in its graph. It’s math, empty set: 

a lone tree, one hand cracked. 
Not only were you not here

I knew you would never 

want to be—in this slow Doppler 					       λ

of old men, who pointed out 

what I (on my own) 						
might have missed: here’s the red-flecked 

bushes, these ? peppercorns 
that numb, that mild electric         				 λ

current you can touch			
against your tongue.  

The more we spoke 
the more people that gathered			 

and like some failed 				
constant, our din              			λ

grew as we traveled, as the whistle 	
cried and changed pitch 	   

through a town, came close  λ

and then behind us—
λ, or daylight pulled away. 







Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers’s first book is forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press in 2013.  
Her poems appear in Crazyhorse, Crab Orchard Review, Field, Agni Online, Seneca Review, 
Asheville Poetry Review, and many others.  She is a graduate of Oberlin College, and recently, 
the MFA program at Cornell University.  She also spent a number of years living in rural China.