Trevor Ketner
Earth Poem that Once Took the Form of a Sonnet
In blood
a stone,
metallic,
perfect beam
for body,
gut, bone-domed
head. It warms.
It loves to,
can’t help
but hold,
stubborn, to body,
to clothes
when spilled
from body.
Look down:
body. Look
out: body.
A room
is a stone.
A bed is
a stone; a pair
of stones
forms a stone
from fire
and a body.
That stone
is a wet stone;
ceasing wetness
it dries.
In one form
a stone, am I
then a stone?
In the middle
of a stone,
a dry warmth.
In the middle of
a warmth,
a wet
room. In
the middle
of a room,
a warm stone.
I touch the stone.
It hums
in my chest.
The stone
unravels,
inside a river.
Maranassati Poem that Once Took the Form of a Villanelle
Practice: picture
your own dead
body, on the forest
floor, decaying.
Start by laying
your body out
in front of you,
paling into
the practice,
skin rent
with fluid
and gas as it
all melts
slowly into
the forest
floor, decaying.
You must imagine
a smell
that can summon
crows—this
is part
of the practice.
Visceral blue,
exposed, turns,
dried white—
bones powder
the forest floor
with decay.
Then nothing,
no rising,
only the undone
mirror saying,
“This is the practice:
the forest floor
decaying.”
Water Poem that Once Took the Form of a Sonnet
A river wet as
an opening.
Wet, a river
finds the world
surrounding it
is a cloud of
wooled light.
One finds stones
in the river—
in the river’s
unraveling.
Living now
between two rivers
no one touches,
I remember wandering
between so many
bowls; open
as a sound,
a flat body
wells and wells
its silent throb.
In one form
a river, am I
then a river?
In the middle
of a river,
a surface.
In the middle
of a surface,
a dry room.
In the middle
of a room,
a wet flame.
On a ferry
last summer
I shielded
my eyes from
the water—
refusing to
hold fire,
it cast it out.
Trevor Ketner is the author of Negative of a Photo of Fire (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), White Combine: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (The Atlas Review, forthcoming), and Major Arcana: Minneapolis, winner of the Burnside Review Chapbook Contest judged by Diane Seuss. They have been or will be published in The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, New England Review, Ninth Letter, West Branch, Pleiades, Diagram,Memorious and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from the University of Minnesota and have been awarded fellowships from Poets House and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. They currently live in Manhattan with their husband.
Malasaña | Hudson, NY| Cargo Collective | Portland, ME | 2021