Samuel Amadon, “Archipelago This, Archipelago That”

Went out to where the leaves spread scuttlefist.
Neva. Tsars. Took the canary you hid at home
where I would find him & had hoped I wouldn’t

ask, would take him, hand him (early, empty)
but how we wouldn’t, for miserable, for bleak-
broke, fly. Soldiers came demanding. Tried

Dutch. Tried Finnish. Brought out, I mentioned
you & bird. Here was some incompetent
morning of gestures and useless task. They took

my coins, didn’t linger or flinch for my bother.
Bird on my finger. Flickless bird. Featherstayed.
You would be up soon. What have I ever been?

Like the Sea, the first extended collection from Samuel Amadon, was a winner of the 2009 Iowa Poetry Prize. Other poems in this collection include “A Uselessness of Amadons” (at the Poetry Society of America website), “A Discrete or Continuous Sequence of Measurable Events Distributed in Time” (Fou Magazine), and “Pass-Pass, or All My Pulses” (H_ngm_n, with several other poems). You can also read three poems at La Petite Zine and two poems at Typo.

And here’s Amadon reading one of his poems for Rabbit Light Movies:

Samuel Amadon from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

19 April 2010 | poetry |