K. Hazzard
How quiet can it be between two people,
between two sides of a page
Where, nearby, is there a Sumerian lyre of Ur
Is that its neck there, is this the cedar soundbox
Are those its arms, inlaid with lapis lazuli and red limestone
To have seen it whole, who would you be
How far from paper to a slanted hand,
from the living to the barely dead
How many books can fill a head
Do sentences surround it, then attack
Do they move toward it finally,
the way a mouse in a long-closed-up house
contents herself with soap
When there is talk, how small is it
Are the people small too, is the talk loud to them
How small if so, how loud, on what kind of scale
Quick flash of red, a tri-cornered hat,
a wide belt’s flat back
And the little clicks of an abacus
Is it the reckoner passing, through the long grass
K. Hazzard has published poems in Best of Writers at Work, Columbia, Helicon, In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is the co-founder of Electronic Poetry Review.