Steven Toussaint

from fiddlehead

and woke in a flood
his cosmos drained into

ear for the symmetries’ lure
lyre
eye for the light everburning
in Tartarus
drone into which all musics whisk
ovens dug in the swells

as if to cook bells in
mounds like corn crop upto bridge five shores
as the bellbird flies

sprung green on
peeled orange
breath propellant
through screened lungs
if smoke lines
edging
petrified glades with ritual garland
were birds

where thicket
punctuates the ridge
iron is fundamental

Guillaume de Machaut
antipodal nave plover

flower of copper in a polar wind

en Arnaut
his cadahus in ear
as I stare
caduceus waves in wand play

tympanum birds

as if the sea once
corporeal
drum now the issued
constant
tides tighten
into black conch
I can hear
the ocean



Winner of the 2012 Winter Anthology Contest