Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Between Languages, Howard Cooper 'Ur-language' Oksana Maksymchuk 'Multifarious Beast' Zinovy Zinik 'My Mother Tongue, My Fatherland' Philip Terry 'Lost Languages' Victoria Moul 'Bad Latin, Barbarous Inglishe'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 234, Volume 43 Number 4, March - April 2017.

Two Poems Jack Hanson
Mere Semblance

Something within me, friend,
is not my own.

The angle of the ridge
is hard as steel

and cuts the sky in two.
I was once like

that ridge and before then,
pre-severed sky:

shapeless in form, filled out
with white purple.

And then I was graceful
and it was good

to see you. And as if
I had never

been, there’s now another
who dwells within

and whom one sees like glass,
there and not there,

a semblance of space
dividing things up.
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image