shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


James Owens's most recent book is Mortalia (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Adirondack Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Honest Ulsterman, and Southword. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.


James Owens


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Etymology of Wisp at the Winter Beach

No emptiness can last. The mind digresses to words.
The blast of gull-swept wind stood a moment
for non-being, for not-thinking, and held true for that interval

the bluff broad gust had filled, the noisy self
chastened and blank, blown-through with mist and cold –
but here wind slacks, and at random the word:

start from Old Norse visk, a stick, and then whisk broom,
and whisker, thinning to wisp, a thing dissolving
against the sky, as light as a hair flown loose,

and distantly verge, a faulted stick as border-marker
dividing sand and water, water and sky, self
and wind, wispy foam and now and gone.