Robert Fanning

ísrák // glacial striae

Earthscrawl. Rockpaper. Hurtsong. This holy ravishment. This network
of astonishing wounds. The language of damage. On land, on the body.
What we made with what breaks us. This abrasion of hours, the weight
of memory. The glare of rough praise. All art is living evidence of what
we moved against. Of what moves us. Of how we dragged a world in us
over rock, back to the sea. In these lines, on this body. Go on—read
the ways of my going. This scratched sediment on a page. All that’s left
is ghostpoem. A valley I carved out. How I slowly left all that held me.

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Robert Fanning (he/him/his) is the author of four full-length collections, Severance, Our Sudden Museum, American Prophet and The Seed Thieves, as well as two chapbooks, Sheet Music and Old Bright Wheel. His poems have been published by Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, Waxwing, THRUSH and many other journals. A Professor of English/Creative Writing at Central Michigan University, he is the Founder/Director of PEN/INSULA, an online resource for Michigan poets, and the Founder/Facilitator of the Wellspring Literary Series, where he lives in Mt. Pleasant, MI.