top of page

Jane Zwart: a poem



Dysthymia


Rightly, wrongly, some things

I hang on my father: a sarcophagus

locket, token of a museum


draped in borrowed winding

sheets (from Turin, God's raisin face;

from Luxor, Tut tangled mid-


metamorphosis, rich man

to river birch). Rightly, wrongly: brain

chemistry, a fearsome ribbon


of syrup at the base of a flask

and dreams higher proof than the dram,

doors that will not lock,


doors that won't open.


On me, my father hung his binoculars,

armored, brass, tubes


of viridescence on a plastic

lace. He taught me to look. Some things

that weigh like dread we can fly.



Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines.

0 views

Comments


bottom of page