Una Vida de Piedra y de PalabraUna Vida de Piedra y de Palabra number 23 in the 2River Chapbook Series
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poems by Charles D. Tarlton

Contents

I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.

In the Dialectic of Over and Under
Truth in the Larger Sense
“Lives in the Balance”
On Death, and Dying’s Threshold
“Give Me Men to Match my Mountains”
Going-to-the-Sun
“But Eternity Remains”
Convergence of Time and Distance
Tantum Ergo
Blood of My Blood
Only the Rational Is Real
Ecce Homo

Other Ways to Read

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Tarlton Reads from the Chapbook

Other Matters

About the author
About the Artist

 

  IX:  Tantum Ergo

1

eagle on a star
        vineyards laughing
fortress nowhere
        an eyeless talwar
diamond-studded fascia
        some pompous bread
tumbling staircase
        monstrous eyelids
three-sided jumper
        rock-hard sperm cells
sculpted in streetlights
        igneous baguettes
crumbling to serpents
        pebbled rosebuds
on a ghostly shipwreck
        fractured boulders
moon pony rides
        on stone beams
seasonal squadrons
        granite steaming
ultimate Euclidean line
        across rock pages
plowing ice from antipodes
    
*     *     *

deep roots into the mountains
        on the sea’s roof.                 

2

wrought pinnacles
of forlorn eagles

fastening the sky;
buzzing on high

flat pattern of dried blood
on a hand-fashioned star

endless vacuity of salt
a citrine moon

coiled snake of the mountains
contemplating seed

mute basilica
for a perfect patria

an ocean of virgins before
the nave of towering oak
                 
*     *     *

eruption of clasped hands
enshadowing waterfalls

molten swells clocked
on a future weather vane.


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