Mark Irwin

Powder

Yesterday I opened your pill box, and there

on one oblong chalk tablet, read with my finger

the laws by which we live—love, and with a pin’s

chisel wanted to carve more while your wrist

skirted that dark, and the cupidon of our past gazed down.

Author: Mark Irwin

Mark Irwin’s thirteen collections of poetry include Once When Green (Juniper Prize for Poetry, 2025), Joyful Orphan (2023), Shimmer (2020) Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, American Urn: New & Selected Poems (1987- 2014), Tall If (2009), and Bright Hunger (2004). He recently completed a long translation project entitled Zanzibar: Selected Poems & Letters of Arthur Rimbaud, with an afterword by Alain Borer.

Plume: Issue #3 September 2011