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.