photo by John Carroll
Michelle Taransky
was born in Camden. Her first book, Barn Burned, Then, was selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Taransky lives in Philadelphia and works at Kelly Writers House. She also teaches writing at Penn and Temple University.
Audio: Michelle Taransky reads "Profit & Loss Statement" and "Fall Instructions"
Profit & Loss Statement
I have been a gypsy a couple
Of times she said if I said
In the past, each color stood
To remind you your birth
Name was Fox and please quit
Forgetting the charge to hand
Me nothing
But letters
Because they are lies if
Nothing else nothing past tense
Part the wilderness sound
Asleep dreaming the accountant is
Saying how can you imagine anything
Incorrectly— Besides what else is there in addition
To naming the dead fox
Robert and referring to him
As Robber, as Giver
Who gives us dreams of his dreams of the fox-fire
Out of which barely one thrush
Emerged still
The leaves turned I
Swore a storm was
On its way however
Without lightning who is able to tell that
The letter had everything to do
With Master turning to the teller
To tell her he knows
So what if the piles turn into
Guilt after guilt, where no matter
The ways to a way to admit it
This line is about the theft
It is about time
Safes that stay safe
Fall Instructions
In the safe you will
Find the combination to open the fire safe
At the end of the world
Is an argument and its stolen
Negotiator putting stones
Into the wild
Fire
Into saying wills will want to forgive
You and change you who made matter
And measured night falling on
That space that is afforded them
Did them put them in a ditch
Burying them and buried their ashes if
Then there
The smoke clouds are burglars
Are all we know is that it is the fall
So far we had come so far
Along the edge worrying about impending
Falls into the line of grave the graves’
Diggers are crying
Wolf where there is no need
For accounting the mistaking
Of the property lines for babies
I cannot help
Myself but cry whenever anyone else is
Crying
Is placing all
The firewood in the firesafe
We will make sure we storm
Out before the fall
When we are told to count
Casualties I asked you to keep time
That time it would have been enough to be-
Fall us
Both poems from Barn, Burned Then (2009)
