by Laura Kolb
Once or twice in your life you will see a yellow hill –
maybe wild mustard in bloom or tall dry grass –
full in the sun with a blue-black sky behind it.
You’ll be driving, without a good place to pull over,
or maybe you’ll be on a bus rounding a corner
on its way between two small foreign towns.
Either way. it’ll only last a moment: sky breaking open,
gold pouring down on golden ground. You’ll strain
to take in the hill’s bright rise, the coil of clouds,
and then it will be gone. When you get where you’re going
you’ll say, “The drive was pretty.” You’ll say, “I thought
it might storm.” That night, you’ll see the afterimage
just before sleeping, but simpler, made abstract:
big squares of colour and, with them, a sense
of breaking through. Of getting underneath
the shell of things.
Dragon’s hoard.
Liquid core.
The world’s yolk.
About the author:
Laura Kolb teaches literature at Baruch College in New York. Her poems have appeared in Contrary Magazine and the Columbia Review; she has written prose for Electric Literature and the TLS. She can be found (sporadically) on Twitter as @B_as_in_Boat.
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