“Wind Aflush in the Head, A Wakefulness” by Emily Rosko
05/09/2018
The poem “Wind Aflush in the Head, A Wakefulness” appears in the poetry collection Weather Inventions by Anne Barngrover, published by The University of Akron Press as part of the 2018 Akron Series in Poetry. Visit uakron.edu/uapress to order a copy of Emily’s book and to browse other Akron Series in Poetry books.
Wind Aflush in the Head, A Wakefulness
The cold winds feelingly persuade
me what I am. Temporary
wakefulness that shakes
the mind as if a forest canopy, darkly
flushed and increasing. The late sky’s
cirrus is spent. Wind-billowed, cauterized
cloud-ribs remain. Dogwood buds
button-closed against the in-breaking
sun. Bone-gray branches
but all the limbs alive. This air
in me is not me but I inhabit
it. Every breath, a threshold.
Emily Rosko is the author of two previous poetry collections: Prop Rockery, winner of the 2011 Akron Poetry Prize, and Raw Goods Inventory, winner of the 2005 Iowa Poetry Prize. She has been the recipient of the Stegner and Ruth Lilly fellowships. Editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa Press, 2011), she also is the poetry editor for Crazyhorse. She is associate professor of English at the College of Charleston.
(Cover image courtesy of The University of Akron Press)