Can the Egg Be Put Back Into the Shell
Cordelia Hanemann
Content Warnings: blood, death, violence
a contemporary zuihitsu after Kimiko Hahn
1. The stranger was breathing and the blood
welled out of him
he swallowed and stood his ground
2. The moth bats against the window
until it stops
falls exhausted
to the ground
a still life
3. The painter picks up a brush
hears the wind blowing
paints a still-life
in three strokes–and stops
4. For the poet the sentence stops (too)
when action stumbles
over a comma
a pencil is a rifle
the feeling and the event are the same
5. The pencil is re-markable
a drone sent over a pristine countryside
but no one is home
6. There's no going home after all
the houses have been torn down
event changes everything
7. The far-off smoke of houses
the city is burning the country is
we dig up the earth to burn in our cars
we will all be burning
all the unknown children
8. Bullets from a rabid pencil rain down
on school children
whose heads are bare
9. In another world barren children will tell
their stories // effort will be required to
tell them (again) // still the wind blows
10. The moth in the window tells a story
caught (again) an image in glass
in a frame a still life
11. Humpty Dumpty's half of a broken pencil
fallen like the moth
exhausted
matches the other half
12. Exhaustion haunts him
exhausts him
exhaust fumes out
the town is burning
smoke / air / suffocating
we cannot breathe here
and the window is nailed closed
unbelievable
13. Just knowing that the window is closed
nailed shut and the door
and that the house is burning
the earth is burning
and the stars are scattering
skittering away into new darknesses
14. Some black hole
can't go home again
or dust to dust
just knowing that
15. Truth is stranger than fiction
a stranger breathing
who would believe it
we all need ground to stand on
not merely a sentence : a story
1. The stranger was breathing and the blood
welled out of him
he swallowed and stood his ground
2. The moth bats against the window
until it stops
falls exhausted
to the ground
a still life
3. The painter picks up a brush
hears the wind blowing
paints a still-life
in three strokes–and stops
4. For the poet the sentence stops (too)
when action stumbles
over a comma
a pencil is a rifle
the feeling and the event are the same
5. The pencil is re-markable
a drone sent over a pristine countryside
but no one is home
6. There's no going home after all
the houses have been torn down
event changes everything
7. The far-off smoke of houses
the city is burning the country is
we dig up the earth to burn in our cars
we will all be burning
all the unknown children
8. Bullets from a rabid pencil rain down
on school children
whose heads are bare
9. In another world barren children will tell
their stories // effort will be required to
tell them (again) // still the wind blows
10. The moth in the window tells a story
caught (again) an image in glass
in a frame a still life
11. Humpty Dumpty's half of a broken pencil
fallen like the moth
exhausted
matches the other half
12. Exhaustion haunts him
exhausts him
exhaust fumes out
the town is burning
smoke / air / suffocating
we cannot breathe here
and the window is nailed closed
unbelievable
13. Just knowing that the window is closed
nailed shut and the door
and that the house is burning
the earth is burning
and the stars are scattering
skittering away into new darknesses
14. Some black hole
can't go home again
or dust to dust
just knowing that
15. Truth is stranger than fiction
a stranger breathing
who would believe it
we all need ground to stand on
not merely a sentence : a story
Cordelia Hanemann, writer and botanical artist, co-hosts Summer Poets in Raleigh, NC. Professor emerita retired English professor, she works with youth poetry in the NCPS. She has published in Atlanta Review, Laurel Review, and California Review; in numerous anthologies including best-selling Poems for the Ukraine and her chapbook. Her poems have been performed by the Strand Project, featured in select journals, won awards and been nominated for Pushcarts. She is now working on a novel.