Issue 10

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Poetry

Moon Jar, Century Unclear
by Ed Roberson

Part of the pearlescent surface is gone
from the glass back to sand, a label
of time, that through the losses narrowing
this one from the Phoenician through the hour-

glass’s opening to here, names this crust—
only in number grains of year, not the shift,
not the heat, the fires, the person of each
who held it through, held the jar against its slake,

archaeological glass breaks itself
down      from the outer layers inward into—
Feel the sandstorm of the glass dissolution
on the surface, the gritty cloud rise

out of the smooth, and transparence fade
in and out of its crust, a moon through the clouds.

Ed Roberson is the author of eight books of poetry, including the forthcoming To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Wesleyan University Press). He is a visiting artist in the English department at Northwestern University.

Read more in Issue 10

I wonder what Henry James would say to Toni Morrison by Austin Ratner
On Irrelevance: Part III by Amy Leach
On Irrelevance: Part II by Tim O'Sullivan
On Irrelevance: Part I by Mary-Beth Hughes
Poetry Moon Jar, Century Unclear by Ed Roberson
An Irrelevant Writer: Shen Congwen by Yiyun Li