Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty.
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The Shape of Usefulness
by Luray Gross
“I try to fit language into the shape of usefulness.”
– Claudia Rankine
The shape of a salt crystal, for example,
or a needle, a wedge, a bolt.
I try to fit language into the curve
of a chalice or cupped hand,
or the flat dry rock just big enough
to step on before you leap to the far bank.
Fit language into the waterwheel’s turning
or the piston’s thrust. Into the shape of an ember
holding heat enough to be urged back into flame.
Sometimes, into the shape of a kiss.
I try to fit language into the breath
of a sigh or a frantic wave.
Into raindrop, dewdrop, teardrops.
I press words between pages of a heavy book
and wait months for them to speak.
They could be blade or arrow, basket or bowl,
rope or ladder, chisel or hammer,
but I want my words to be fabric anyone can shape
into shirt or shroud, altar cloth, bandage, or banner.
Tell me what you need.
Blue Malibu
by Luray Gross
in homage to René Magritte
Summer drives up in a blue Malibu.
She and he, he and she;
their spendthrift delve and dive.
Someone plummets; something slides.
How does anything remain whole?
It’s always like this in a story or a dream.
You are running and a door flings open
into a room you do not know.
No lock to keep you out.
The funhouse mirror shatters.
You gather the shards:
cobalt, ruby, violet, gold.
Hold them in your palm, an altar;
your breath, a prayer.
This time, this time you’ll discern the pattern.
Mended one, you’ll mend;
one hand daring the other to mercy.
Slant the needle, draw the thread.
Pierce and stitch, stitch and pierce.
© Luray Gross, Lift, 2018.
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The Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway and Murphy Writing are programs of Stockton University
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Want to study with Luray Gross? Luray will lead Poetry and Advanced Poetry Workshop sessions at the 2020 Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway.
Luray Gross is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Lift from Ragged Sky Press. A storyteller as well as a writer, she works extensively throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania as an Artist in Residence. She was the recipient of a Fellowship in Poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and named one of their Distinguished Teaching Artists. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the 2006 Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, NH. Her poem, “The Perfection of Zero,” was featured by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project in 2008. Read some of her poems from The Perfection of Zeros and read another one of her poems here.
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