A Web Chapbook from The Literary Review  

Barbara J. Orton
It wants to be dark, lavish
and exact: carved wet slate
bedded in an argument of peat.

With the precision of a fetishist
it fastens on detail: the thick veins
in your throat, the crooked line
of an eyebrow, the crook of an arm--

a tender dismemberment.
It wants to address one eccentric soul,
but always comes back to the physical.


 BARBARA J. ORTON was born to English emigrants in 1969. She received her MFA in writing form Washington University in St. Louis. ("Love Poem" was the Academy of American Poets Award at Washington in 1994.) Her poems have appeared in The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, Delmar, Pleiades, and Sou'wester, and are forthcoming in Verse. She lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with two cats and a computer.

A Work by Barbara J. Orton:

1

      JONAH

      I sank my teeth into the salt ground.
      There was no cry. Only later,
      when the city put on sackcloth
      and starved its cattle, I heard something--
      a hiss of pity rising from the dry,
      ungathered grain. An assoiling sound.

      I spent three nights in that acid womb.
      Now I will wait by the city gates until
      you fulfill your promise. Nineveh
      is unforgiven. This wall is marked
      with branching shadows where the dead
      vines will have been torn away.


Selections from Barbara J. Orton's work:

Poetry, Part I

Poetry, Part II

Poetry, Part III

Poetry, Part IV




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