Joy Katz - The Garden Room

Joy Katz is finding dislocations in the ordinary, unlike anyone else writing to day. Her new chapbook, The Garden Room, is just out from Tupolo Press. An excellent little book.


Color of the Sheets.


Far from the dominant science of white
I found this white
                          in continual pour.

In the midst of this ordinary place, the bed.

Flooding the space between my eyes.
A sudden clearing, and then a floating at waist level.
Neither putting itself gaily forth as a sail
nor sequencing itself like a pencil.

Shall I hand you such a noblesse?

It makes my heart clutch out
to see a thing so long moored finally commence.

Will I see it fail, in your sights?
In the midst of an ordinary place, whiteless?

I weep at how I can count on it,
such unreasonably good fate in the midst of a life.
Even a small satan like myself it will accept.