my thin-skinned wandering
Poems and Images by Piper Leigh
Published by Tres Chicas Books
250 pages, $30.00
Purchase my thin-skinned wandering
“my thin-skinned wandering is a powerful invitation for the reader to become more than a reader of poems—to engage with transparency, the literary fragment and the image in such a way that the book becomes felt experience, both physically and emotionally. The poems are a testament to what is born of loss, to the abiding natural world, and to embracing the intensity of longing so that the door can be opened to what mystery reveals. In the words of the poet, ‘this dim notion of life’s myriad details matters.’” — Renée Gregorio, Tres Chicas Books.
Tres Chicas Books invited me to make a poetry book that embraces image, language and texture utilizing my own poetry and photography. Drawing upon experience with artists books, I produced my thin-skinned wandering in which I intended to stretch the meaning of “book.” — Piper Leigh, 2011
Tangled Weeds
from the Cold
Stream
There is for example a dusty blue
when brown wings fold close to the body
the blue grosbeak glorious in the spot of sun
just before flight
there is for example the cold hand
reaching up from the depths one perfectly blue sky morning
to grasp your ankle take your breath
drape doubt’s black weight upon your shoulders
there is for example the brittle grass
crackling against silk and ankles
as you count steps inside an indigo kimono
hidden crickets rasp
there is for example the shiver when the cello
appeals to the violin to the entire world really
listen listen don’t turn away
this dim notion of life’s myriad details matters
Sleeping Beauties
is the name cartographers give blank spaces.
Spring runoff from the Sangres fills the river.
Geese return. The world warms up.
You push and pull oars, use the current
for navigation, take in stone’s quiet,
sleep deeply on grassy shelves.
I follow you into the gorge.
An explorer, you leave
the excavated and the mapped,
content with this red-yellow curve,
sandstone passage between this moment
and the next.
A note from Tres Chicas Books