George Estreich

George EstreichGeorge EstreichGeorge Estreich
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Contact
    • Fables and Futures
    • The Shape of the Eye
    • Textbook Illustrations
    • Unexpected
    • Prose
    • Interviews
  • Events
  • Music
    • Home
    • Bio
    • Contact
    • Books
      • Fables and Futures
      • The Shape of the Eye
      • Textbook Illustrations
      • Unexpected
    • prose & interviews
      • Prose
      • Interviews
    • Events
    • Music

George Estreich

George EstreichGeorge EstreichGeorge Estreich
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Contact
  • Events
  • Music

Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body

poems from Textbook Illustrations

Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body was my first full-length book, the winner of the Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books (2003). (I've also published a chapbook, Elegy for Dan Rabinowitz.)  Here's a short poem from the book. 


*


Astronomy: Three Families


1.

From this angle they seem

a bright pattern against the darkness--

each separate point 

taking its place in the figure.

As if they were in truth

anywhere near each other,

as if they weren't flying from a common center

as fast as they could go.


2. 

Our lunatic cousin's been scarred

so long, his scars have names:

sea of cold. sea of serenity, sea

of fog, sea of rains, 

each a dry bed where the salt

once was, each a discolored

pucker in his jaundiced skin. 


All night he watches himself

by his own light

in the broken mirror of the Pacific

pale zero split into a million ones.


3.

What's this dark matter

holding us together?
Something we can't see

or touch.

It might weigh enough

to bring us home in the end. 



 



image50

Copyright © 2018 George Estreich - All Rights Reserved.


Powered by GoDaddy