Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access
November 2015 Issue [Readings]

Release the Darkness to New Lichen

By Peter Gizzi, from the spring issue of Granta. Gizzi’s selected poems, In Defense of Nothing, was published last year by Wesleyan University Press.

but I found a way to say no
to the wood in my house

it kept creaking
wouldn’t stop talking

I found a way to say no

I need to be standing
in the warmth of the wood
that the sun made

I need to find myself dissolving

otherwise it is all otherwise
I’m lost, did I say that

I saw the frill of light today
walking on the path

could you hear the stirring
in the wood, pine needles
and the branches

was it wind or a creature
am I here or is it over

this was the first day
the nothing day
in the nothing year

it gave me courage

it gave hints of blue,
clouds, electric
and dancing

it gave me rays
I’ve never seen

shooting down
touching things

this was the first day


More from

| View All Issues |

September 2016

Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug