Author: Barbara Tomash

Barbara Tomash is the author of three books of poetry, Arboreal (Apogee 2014), Flying in Water, which won the 2005 Winnow First Poetry Award, and The Secret of White (Spuyten Duyvil 2009). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, New American Writing, Denver Quarterly, WebConjunctions, VOLT, Bateau Press, Verse, Jacket, OmniVerse, Witness, and numerous other journals. She lives in Berkeley, California and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.

[non-] & [a-] & [re-] & [twi-]

[non-]

to talk freely in active vegetative growth
            of material being

                                    *

lacking a flowering that is not fictional

            when dissolved failing to do what ought
                        to be done

            refrains from interpretation

                                    *

negation of being
            all the postulates of Euclid

when melted
            negation of being

                                    *

a combination of nine instruments or voices
            different, fraternal

at loss as to what to say, think, or do as run-off from a farmland

            not any not one nobody

                                    *

unperson
            when exposed in a thin film of speech sound

germination is possible

[a-]

the pericarp of a peach / (in bitterness of words) / whose thin outer
covering / no center, stalk, or stem / branches joined end to end / (in
sharpness of words) (in error) / where the needle does not dip / spiritual
indifference / all senses develop from the sense of around

[re- ]

flood water
the marks on the houses the height of

                        a lapse of time            from last to first
            in arteries and nerves            in evidence of

a reverse process
in thought talk or memory            as after a lunge

                        as land from the sea            as paper into coin
            an angle bent back            towards an earlier question

or a stroke in rowing
to become harsh or raw to become active again

[twi-]

the angle through which
                        a thing is twisted

            atmosphere and its dust

threads pass over one and under two
                        ethical and diagonal lines

            full light a double thread            to bring forth

the movements of
            an ascending column of air