air twisting absently through crumples leaves like failed drafts or hands drawn with the wrong fingers discarded efforts shuffling away the bells have been disabled hours left to smudge together no rubber pang of foursquare, no grinding grit no drag of cast-off packs where feet of temporary sizes would pad by trailing bundles of laughter loosed like rolling beads then fall in line and scuff upstairs no voices flock and jostle where ladders end or crow and trill, treading on each other but twining and ribboning still satin bright, they would have been and will be overpass traffic drags by erasing birdsong and the massive gray streak of the city train cancels even that the silent alarm that warped the spring still ringing
POET BIO:
Ellen Gould lives in Oakland, California and discovered in a recent time of crisis that poetry is how she stays intact. She has appeared in OpenDoor Poetry Magazine and Jet Fuel Review and hopes to complete a book-length collection in 2021. Ellen is a graphic designer and holds a BFA from California College of the Arts, where she studied poetry with Michael McClure and Rae Armantrout.