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 190, Volume 36 Number 2, November - December 2009.

Three Poems Linda Gregerson

The Turning

Just then, when already he’s trying
               to leave, improbably

             young and fair-
complected, the absence of pigment a kind

of disease - he’s come as a last
             concession and the church

             is cold, the other,
the pastor, so palpably wedded to grief he

looks with envy at the fair one, grief’s
             addictive, it will hitch

             a ride on anything -
and that’s when it happens, off-camera,

outside, some parting of the beaten
             sky as relayed

             by the gaffer, and
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image