Selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge as a finalist for Omnidawn’s 2019 Open Poetry Book Prize, and by Dawn Lundy Martin as a finalist for Omnidawn’s 2019 1st/2nd Book Prize
from Alameda
This is a history
working its way down the stem
It tips the blue powder
from the table
and covers the Italy
of us with kisses
so that we breathe
imperceptibly through our noses,
a boss in the center
of our ribs
Green under the sun
and ash but summer’s bite
The only answer to history is aesthetic
A Cordelia for the television age
In a place no animal could go
unless adjusted in a remiss
of fire
Like a wreckage
spilt like bees from the Mouth it
is a Honee of winter made
Holy by Climate; wherefore
Islandes. Wherefore peace
is peace, interred by lushe
foliage that is the Mind
having Split coin in fair
weather and Copy. This is
the onely Divine Notion,
that Inertia has no Origin.
Every Thing is atypical in
some sens; that there is
Geometry in Myth is cleare,
it is the guitar neck. The
dreamer offers no account
of the Nature of dreams,
for Shee is an Obsess
of the World
A girl named Haiti
standing in the rain
A kitchen knife in each hand
and no kitchen
Broc Rossell reading: from Alameda
Broc Rossell is the author of Festival (Cleveland State University Press 2015) and Alameda (Selva Oscura 2020). He publishes The Elephants (theelephants.net) with Jordan Scott and is an assistant professor of creative writing at NTU, Singapore.