Judith Skillman Poems

Tasted, smelled, rising from hot asphalt, sweet rain
in the street where a man works on his camper in the rain.

Like desire, felt less often now we are old, the joint pain
...

To scissor the palm from an azure sky
men come, holding blades, unlikely
Machete taken from a drug lord whose luck
Fell when the tunnel entrance,
...

Her teacher once told her she had a wolf
inside the f-hole, beneath the G string, a sylph

note crying out when she played, like a cough
...

You walked up Tabletop Mountain
And found a skull. A coyote, dog,
Or wolf - you are not sure.
...

When she thinks back on it
The place was dull, all gray and tan,
Industrial white, no flavor other
Than the whiff of memory.
...

One gray leaf snipped finger and thumb
from the larger body
of felt. Animal for an afternoon.
No particulars save for a wan sun
...

She watches the other, her well twin,
from a distance. Sees the part
of the story where that one
...

Summer. Heat
takes the water
from our mouths,
and gives us thirst.
...

'In the very antechambers of feeling
it is forbidden to be explicit...'
- Pessoa
...

Through the long hours of afternoon,
the torture of opera wedded to scents
of rising bread, a river of cardamomv
...