Poetry

Organic Sadness, Compost-style

by Molly Peacock

Shenandoah Literary Magazine · Molly Peacock reads and talks about Organic Sadness, Compost-Style

Instead of beating or pulsing inside
Instead of lubdub, the heat inside

Of things breaking down—it’s rich, it’s loam
Of people decomposing into loam

Of the people you’ve collected over years
Of those who’ve lived inside you over years

All in a melting, merging, mushing heap
All in a flecked brown compost heap

Like music shredding, no shedding, its notes
Like light loosing, no losing, its motes

Like a lush everything into every other thing
Like a paste of waste of every into thing

All they all meant becoming feeling
All umber inside the umbra of feeling

Molly Peacock is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Widow’s Crayon Box, The Analyst: Poems, and Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems. Her poems appear in leading literary journals such as Poetry and the American Poetry Review, and are widely anthologized. She is the cofounder of Poetry in Motion on New York’s subways and buses and the founder of The Best Canadian Poetry series.

FROM Volume 74, Numbers 1 & 2