POETRY

Counterpoint

By Brianna Noll     VOLUME 51.2

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Exposition:
light pollution
mutes the stars,
damper on a string
thrummed soft.
The amateur cloud
society voices
the answer, the real
answer, in perfect
cumulo-intervals.
Make a big deal
of the diaphanous
subject, call the
fugue Gossamer, then,
in codetta, startle
us all into life: rattle
of coffee cups in
a veil of smog,
the awkward ring
finger playing
more than its share
of notes to remind
you an urban dawn
is clattering and its
majesty weak
only if you forget
how many hands
play at once in
little kitchens
unseen.




BRIANNA NOLL is the author of The Price of Scarlet, selected by Lisa Williams as the inaugural poetry collection in The University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series. She is Poetry Editor of The Account, which she helped found, and her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere.

VOLUME 51.2