Shannon Holman
Self-portrait as Lazarus
He had a funny way of talking.
Like we'd ask about the kingdom and he'd say,
Check your pockets, or we'd say, teach us of love,
and he'd say, I like small birds.
In those days, every time I put on a fresh sweater
it was warm, as if someone else had just been wearing it.
He had a pocket-knife and he was always carving something:
fish with people inside, trees with human faces, lambs, loaves.
He said he was building a model of everything that had ever happened,
and that everybody had a thing they were supposed to do.
Mine was dying. The first time it was like film flapping outside the projector.
I thought if he cried it meant I was special.
But I could hear him counting his damn sparrows
and I told him, If I had it to do over.
Index to the Book of Knowledge
Discuss Some Things That Give Us Light, 7:2633
A Game To Play: Who Am I? 10:3650
How Our Letters Come To Us, 8:2653
How Did the Flowers Get Their Names? 5:1659
What Does a Bird Sing About? 2:587
What Is the Singing Tower? 2:584
What Is the Use of Having Two Eyes? 11:3842
How Does Oil Make a Rough Sea Calm? 15:5507
Why Is the Fire Hot? 6:2185
How Man Learned to Strike a Light, 19:6964
Why Does the Fire Go Out? 6:2186
Can We Fall Off the Earth? 5:1749
Does Light Die Away? 10:3477
How To Make a Penny Seem to Rise Up, 16:5891
(Source: Home and School Study Guide to The Book of Knowledge, The Grolier Society, 1957. Numbers indicate volume and page numbers.)
Bio:
Shannon Holman
is the author of three chapbooks, Potato Boiled in Water with Salt
and Pepper, Self-Portrait as a Dictionary of Symbols, and Opal
Memos Nonchalant (with coauthors Shanna
Compton and Jeffrey Salane). Her poems have appeared in Crowd,
Diagram,
Goodfoot,
La
Petite Zine, Lodestar
Quarterly, and Pierogi Press, and her essay "Delicious
Absence" appears in the anthology GAMERS:
Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels.
She studied poetry at Oberlin College and New School University and lives
in Brooklyn, New York.