Barbara Guest Poems

On this dry prepared path walk heavy feet.
This is not "dinner music." This is a power structure.
...

Once more riding down to Venice on borrowed horses,
...

Cloud fields change into furniture
furniture metamorphizes into fields
an emphasis falls on reality.
...

At sunset from the top of the stair watching

the castle mallets wrenched from their socket

fell from ambush into flame flew into hiding;
...

for John Coltrane


Words
after all
...

In the past we listened to photographs. They heard our voice speak.
Alive, active. What had been distance was memory. Dusk came,
Pushed us forward, emptying the laboratory each night undisturbed by
Erasure.
...

Unreasonable lenses refract the
sensitive rabbit holes, mole dwellings and snake
climes where twist burrow and sneeze
a native species
...

"painting has no air . . ."
—Gertrude Stein

That there should never be air
in a picture surprises me.
...

I go separately
The sweet knees of oxen have pressed a path for me
ghosts with ingots have burned their bare hands
it is the dungaree darkness with China stitched
...

There is no fear
in taking the first step
or the second
or the third
...