Coma
Bodies of ice and dust move through space.They sleep like seeds in the dark. They bloom
like matches at the edge of what we thinkwe know. You don’t always see it coming.Beyond a point, a priori worlds
break down. One December night, perhapsyou’ll keep moving even when you can
no longer feel that you are moving.Zuangzhi awakened. He didn’t know if he
had only dreamt he was a butterflyor was a butterfly that dreamt it was a man. • After the lecture on Taoism, a motor-
cycle carried me towards home. I wasa tuning fork pitched to the combustion.
I was an iron finial ensconced in cloud.In dreams I’ve braced for impact as
the pavement came like static at the endof a film. I’ve purled like a goldfinch
and I’ve flown. I’ve been a child pearling inthe mollusk dark. I’ve been a stone.
Feature Date
- February 20, 2018
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Copyright © 2018 by Carol Quinn
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Carol Quinn’s debut collection, Acetylene (2010), won the Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poetry and prose appear in Colorado Review, Pleiades, River Styx, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Women Write Resistance and Hot Sonnets. She teaches at Towson University in Maryland.
Spring 2018
Denver, Colorado
University of Colorado Denver
Editor / Managing Editor
Wayne Miller
Poetry Editors
Brian Barker
Nicky Beer
Copper Nickel—the national literary journal housed at the University of Colorado Denver—was founded by poet Jake Adam York in 2002. When York died in 2012, the journal went on hiatus until its re-launch in 2014.
Work published in Copper Nickel has appeared in the Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and contributors to Copper Nickel have received numerous honors for their work.
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