Poetry By Sharon Coleman

Donald Lee Pardue CC




two rabbits drowning


my father with the lungs of two rabbits yawning
 
my father with dolphin skin smooth across cheekbones
 
my father with wrists of potatoes, bruised and scaling
 
my father with chameleon eyes peering in two directions
  
my father with a gopher gnawing under his ribs
 
my father with a beard of grey feathers fanned over hatchlings
 
my father with legs of a weary shorebird waiting
 
my father with toenails of garden snails

my father with the lungs of two rabbits drowning
  
my father with nostrils of orcas gasping a balmy morning  
 
my father with the hands of blighted starfish
 
my father with fingers of unearthed carrots
       (i stroke them as his rabbit ears listen above water)
 
my father with the back of a camel slow in standing
 
my father with lips of an anemone sifting the sea’s current
 
my father with the pelvis of a famished deer
 
my father with the sex of a hummingbird tucked under straw
 
my father with the heart of owl wings beating backwards
 
my father with a heart of wind torn in crosscurrents
 
my father with the heart of a stag jumping from rock to rock
 
my father with the heart of a fitful salmon 
 
my father with a heart of granite worn uneven by river water

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Sharon Coleman is a fifth generation Northern Californian with a penchant for languages and their entangled word roots. She has translated poetry from Yiddish, the language of her mother’s family and has studied the Portuguese of her father’s. She grew up deeply in tuned to seasons, growing cycles, so much of the natural world. Her poetry and prose appear in Your Impossible Voice, Faultline, The Ana, Dream Pop Press, White Stag, Rivet, Berkeley Poetry Review. She co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, and co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival.  Her books include Paris Blinks, micro-fiction and Half Circle, poetry. See her website:sharoncolemanpoetry.com.