Lorca in Eden
Major Jackson

posted Feb 10, 2009

Squat by a roadside near Eden, prairie flowers,
barnyard decay, spray of stars bulleting above,
I summon the great poet & pitch my loneliness
across his lake, my chest exploding like milkweed
to nothing more than a stripped hull of seed-fluff:
Un paisaje prodigioso pero de una melancolia
infinita. No cesa de llover.
All this moonlight is
gruesome, so many hearts teased to a nakedness
then bleached & frayed, flapping like scarves in nightwinds—
their radiant mangling all over this meadow of silk.

Major Jackson is the author of Hoops and Leaving Saturn. His third volume of poetry, Holding Company, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton. A recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont, and a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.

Jackson’s poem “Leave It All Up to Me” also appears in this issue.