Dragons
Devin Johnston
We gathered in a field southwest of town,
several hundred hauling coolers
and folding chairs along a gravel road
dry in August, two ruts of soft dust
that soaked into our clothes
and rose in plumes behind us.

By noon we could discern their massive coils
emerging from a bale of cloud,
scales scattering crescent dapples
through walnut fronds,
the light polarized, each leaf tip in focus.

As their bodies blotted out the sun,
the forest faded to silverpoint.
A current of cool air
extended from the bottomlands
an intimation of October,
and the bowl of sky deepened
its celestial archaeology.

Their tails, like banners of a vast army,
swept past Orion and his retinue
to sighs and scattered applause,
the faint wail of a child crying.
In half an hour they had passed on
in search of deep waters.

Before our company dispersed,
dust whirling in the wind,
we planned to meet again in seven years
for the next known migration.
Sunlight flashed on windshields

and caught along the riverbank
a cloudy, keeled scale
about the size of a dinner plate,
cool as blanc de Chine
in the heat of the afternoon.
From the book DRAGONS / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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It’s difficult these days to find any sort of public life that offers much joy. So “Dragons” imagines a communal experience through an invented ceremony, watching the migration of mythical creatures. It owes a bit to Tang dynasty poems, and more (in perceptual details) to my notes from the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. My note from this year’s eclipse: “Dusk and dawn in every direction.”
 
Illustration of Anne Carson by Lily Qian
"The Myths of Anne Carson"

"Appearing after almost a decade in which her major publications have been reimaginings of ancient Greek dramas, Wrong Norma, like Carson’s earlier work, engages with the classical world through literary collage. Characteristically, she pastes various scraps from ancient literature alongside samples from contemporary culture and fragments of her own experience. The new collection combines all her usual genres of writing: so-called 'short talks' and mini-essays, jokes and anecdotes, shards of memoir, and playfully inventive translations from the ancient Greek, along with visual art."

via THE NATION
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