ABOUT US | QUARK PRIZES | DAG-3QD SYMPOSIA | MONDAY MAGAZINE | ARCHIVES | FOLLOW US |

3 Quarks Daily Advertising

 

 

 

 

Please Subscribe to 3QD

Subscription options:

If you would like to make a one time donation in any amount, please do so by clicking the "Pay Now" button below. You may use any credit or debit card and do NOT need to join Paypal.

The editors of 3QD put in hundreds of hours of effort each month into finding the daily links and poem as well as putting out the Monday Magazine and doing all the behind-the-scenes work which goes into running the site.

If you value what we do, please help us to pay our editors very modest salaries for their time and cover our other costs by subscribing above.

We are extremely grateful for the generous support of our loyal readers. Thank you!

3QD on Facebook

3QD on Twitter

3QD by RSS Feed

3QD by Daily Email

Receive all blogposts at the same time every day.

Enter your Email:


Preview 3QD Email

Recent Comments

Powered by Disqus

Miscellany

Design and Photo Credits

The original site was designed by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis. The current layout was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde.

The banner images have been provided by Terri Amig, Carla Goller, Tom Hilde, Georg Hofer, Sheherbano Husain, Margit Oberrauch, S. Abbas Raza, Sughra Raza, Margaret Scurlock, Shahzia Sikander, Maria Stockner, and Hartwig Thaler.

« Watching Star Plus in Lahore | Main | Football, Finance, and Surprises »

Monday, January 24, 2011

Monday Poem

Fire in the Brain

God is a fire in the brain Nijinsky said
which is as close to the truth as
anything a dancer might dance
with a bonfire burning in his head
 
God may put you in a trance
with the fluttering of cardinal wings
or with the way the moon looks
mounting the mountain’s back
on the other side of the river
—a bright hole in the dark
a splinter of hope
a sliver

Sometimes beyond the blazing bars
of your incarceration
you hallucinate stars

You surmise the sun’s a substantiating eye
but fear that every distance is not near
(not close enough to make the untellable clear)

You dream days
You dream nights

Sometimes you lie without a clue
in the hour of the wolf
waiting for the wolf to bite

or you wait for the blue to light
When it does you see crocuses

You taste a sweet cloud of honeysuckle
that drifts across the yard
where at a certain spot
between the garden and the shed
you swear paradise was there
—precisely there where a skunk
had shred the grass the night before
grubbing while you were in bed
; grubbing with a skunky conflagration
in her head

God may burn a brain and brand it
God may shrink it or expand it

This is the bed in which
our ignorance reposes which,
by every blister on our brain,
is both a bed of coals
and roses

by Jim Culleny, 1/22/11


Posted by Jim Culleny at 12:20 AM | Permalink

comments powered by Disqus