Camille Rankine is the author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses. Her chapbook, Slow Dance with Trip Wire, received the 2010 Discovery Poetry Prize. She is assistant director of the MFA program in creative writing at Manhattanville College and lives in New York City.

Two Poems

by Camille Rankine


Still Life Mechanical

There is no flowering in my mind, no flower names,
no prairies, no plains, no greenery. One tree,
no leaves, two birds. No words for birds.


No fields of gold. No ripe. One hill,
no wave, no roll. I am billboards
& stone. I am all object,


all dress, no bone. No beast, no wild, no
genus, humanoid. All edifice, all lamppost,
no dusk, no star, no sky.
People on couch
To continue reading please sign in.
Join for free
Already a reader? Sign In