A poem by retired professor of Spanish and Portuguese David Lee Garrison has been nominated for a national prize, the Pushcart. “Emily Dickinson,” published in the fall issue of the Dayton literary magazine, Mock Turtle, was selected by editor Matt Birdsall. The annual Pushcart anthology includes winning poems submitted for consideration by editors from all over the country. David’s poem is an homage to, and an imitation of, the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Emily Dickinson
She loves to rhyme the Latinates,
like immortality,
and blend them with a homely phrase
in gravid symmetry.
She matches words that share one sound,
like God with could and cried;
she hears the buzzing of a fly
that her own death confides.
She dreams of strolling on a moor
that she has never seen,
and smells the purple of the heather
hidden by the sheen.
She challenges those platitudes
time hands us down as given,
and seeks instead a slanted truth—
the shifting light of heaven.
She wanders our imaginations,
gowned in ashen white,
and whispers lines of poetry
that haunt each page of night.
