“First Lines,” from Midnight Lantern by Tess Gallagher. Below I’ve transcribed actual first lines of Tess Gallagher’s poems found in her collection, Midnight Lantern. Only the punctuation has been adapted.
The quilt has slipped.
Today, I wished without mercy
to be a child named after a star --
child that never existed.
I went to the field to break,
having lost the future with him.
He was suffering from too much light,
carried this morning in the dodge and swoop.
I’m the kind of woman, who
how well he knows, he must lift out.
I, who am usually a verb looking for its subject;
what are we now who were two unsynchronized eyelids?
He’s figuring it out;
he’ll always be bringing home.
There is that getting worse at saying,
“Our friends die with us.”
Seen from the road, a herd of sea horses,
thin dog trotting next to traffic.