scale

as in an economy of

The first week or so of submissions for the upcoming issue on "economy" for qarrtsiluni has offered up a range of work -- from flash fiction to photography. And I've been reading and grading papers and portfolios -- so my eyes are watery with words.  Plus I decided to look at Nick Flynn's collection Blind Huber for a way into a project of poems I started during the days of napowrimo. His is a book of poems on bees and a blind 19th century expert. I'd read it and heard him read from it years ago, then it occured to me that book could offer a path into the poems I drafted. 

Here's a poem selected as one of the Discovery winners. 

Repercussions of the Current Import/Export Ratio

      By Jynne Dilling Martin

They smuggled turnip seeds into the new world by

sewing them in a hem. Welcome, the customs official said.

There is a mystery about people when they leave us: how does a

skipped stone pick the moment to sink?

A donkey drags a plow through the dirt. Later in life at the circus he

will learn to do mathematics with his hoof,

stomp out answers to questions of addition and subtraction,

astonish crowds with his understanding of these problems.  I draw

images of who I used to be and drown them in the lake;

I bind them to rocks to prevent them from ever resurfacing.

The customs official sinks crates of contraband into the sea

and wonders where each bullet might have been bound;

the fireworks he hides and explodes the following summer,

his face becoming the strangest colors beneath the bursts.

The snake crawling out of her skin pulls it inside out

like a nylon stocking: I wonder who would recognize me now.

Sometimes seeds lodge deep in clothing and years later sprout

out of gravesites and dresser drawers, turnips for lunch,

turnips for soups, turnips for dinner. I asked the donkey the odds

you'll ever come back. I waited for his leg to lift.