Assignment is assigned. Poem is poetic.

I'm busy with the first uni assignment of the semester, so - this being National Poetry Month - have a poem by Matthew Olzmann (my favourite poet-whose-name-I-keep-forgetting):


While Scratching My Wife's Back, I Calculate
the Distance Between Sky and Earth

In the space where my wife's wings must have been
there are no scars, no broken screws, hinges
or binding clips. There is only her skin.
Though grateful, I experience a twinge

of guilt — that we can't locate the feathers
which rifled her over landfills, carried
her body beyond Earth. These were severed,
erased when she opted to be married

to a man built with more clay than wind. When
she asks, Can you please scratch my back, my hands
know she means, This is how we have chosen
to fall: without memory, meant to land

with what catches us. This means me. Her skin,
left exposed inside a new, coarse Eden.

--Matthew Olzmann

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