Sharon Leiter

A finalist in the Main Street Rag 2007 national poetry competition, Leiter's second book of poems explores the wonders of maturity: the mysteries of owning a body and relinquishing it, of "losing everyone older or frailer" and figuring out how to hold on to them, of wishing for distances and burrowing into a house, of desire unleashed and desire modified. Passionately restrained, honest, and artful, these poems show Leiter as a master of le mot juste and the unsettling, unexpected metaphor.

Sample poems:


Fame

for Darryl

Let the big waters wash over us.
No one will know we were here
in the small offices of our souls,
gathering the light that floats
on motes of dust.

Others were quoted,
placed in the stone pantheon.

Yet we, too, ran our fingers
through glittering strands
of star hair,
tippled on mysteries,
murmured beloved theories.

Oh, yes, we were there with them,
sporting in the same
celestial playroom.
And if the world took little notice,
how should we complain?
Busy as we were
in the only universe we knew,
through the briefest of eternities,
celebrating our fame.



The Dream of Leaving

It was a life.
The waking and sleeping,
the slow train journeying
over the mountain, steaming
again and again into still,
pleasant stations
whose name-plates told us
we lived what
we'd never planned.

And endless brave
mornings when we'd go
again, only to learn
how space is curved
to the contours
of the Mobius fate
that returned us
at nightfall
to the old house,
the dream of leaving,
the hours that sucked us,
moth-like, into each other's
arms and eyes and mouths.

I cannot wrap
these fourteen years
going on fifteen
going on infinity
into a gala package
for God's eyes,
saying, this we did,
it wasn't enough, this is gone.
I cannot become
that camera
that snaps us in
terrible poses
for future museums
to sort and discard.

I'd rather stay
sunk with you here
in the great animal fate,
the tall grass around us,
the summer smells,
the orchestra of insects,

longing for where we are,
going wherever we go next.