Frank Graziano

Turtle Waking near the Trampas

Hardly more than a stone
or some thrown-out thing
rusting in the roadside
muck, hardly heartbeat enough
to grow old.

A dead god, must be, takes in the dead
air yawned from the mouth
that eats fish, air too sluggish
for the steep slope
upward. 

I am trying to let days
harden in layers upon me,
like varnish, to see
my hope hardly more
than a stone or some
thrown-out thing coming home
from a loneliness
so long it grows legs
and walks, from a lie
that hardens around itself.

A dazed bird flies
from a wind-puffed shirt,
a beetle hides in a papercup
pierced by a fork, the air
aches inside a drying
pair of trousers.

And I think: Who am I, upright, hardly
more than a thirst to my name,
to not hide my head
inside my body?

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Frank Graziano’s early career included the publication of several chapbooks of poetry, as well as editions of works by Alejandra Pizarnik, Georg Trakl, Mark Strand and James Wright. Following a BA in poetry writing from the University of Arizona, an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa, and graduate studies in Lima, Peru, Graziano received a doctorate in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico. He lives in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico.

Graziano’s research and writing have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Carter Brown Library, the Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays Programs, and the state arts councils of Arizona, Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania. He has been a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Fundación Valparaíso, the Millay Colony, the Wurlitzer Foundation and the Ucross Foundation.