Jordan Zandi

Winter 2023 | Poetry

Two Poems

The Smoke

What will the smoke do today? the smoke wonders. So reaching

through a hole in the theater

the smoke drifts over hills and trees

and the semblance of hills and trees.

Approaching what appears—a town—

it gathers itself: And the dark river settles

and becomes a house.

Autobiography of a Whale

In this place where stone is a coast

in the place with rocks and wind

in which the sea

does something with the sea

 

one moves without moving

drawn side to side

by the sea.

 

Here we are one—

We face we:

One

as a thing

lies beached on the rock, distinct among stone

its breathing disturbing the fog.

 

And the whale has meaning

or the whale means nothing

(There is no way to tell)—

Nothing can change this—

 

as I, standing in its glaze of eye

wonder if it’s going to die.

 

White and black, the birds above

that circle, know that it is going to die—.

 

 

A thing is at rest;

and the sea will keep it.

Jordan Zandi is the author of Solarium (Sarabande Books, 2016), selected by Henri
Cole for the Kathryn A. Morton prize and named by the New York Times and The New
Yorker as one of the best poetry books of the year. He holds an M.F.A. in poetry from
Boston University and an M.S. in computer science from the University of Chicago. He
currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is the product lead for a data analytics
platform.

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