"Moonlight Sonata" by Olga Lipats

Glass bowl. Silk tie. Gold pin.
Etude. Air and variations.
Fur hat, curled like a possum.
Wool socks. Suite for solo cello.
Choose a box
big enough.
A double bass, perhaps.
A Steinway.

Crumple tissue, pianissimo,
a snakeskin, sloughed.
Make a nest, a guitar's belly,
the flare of a French horn.

Wrap and fold:
the skins of tympani.
leaf-bright paper, crisp wings tucked.
Harp strings. Bow, in full bloom.

BIO: Judith Kerman has published seven books or chapbooks of poetry; most recently the bilingual collection, Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (Santo Domingo: CCLEH, 2002). Her book of translations, A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems of Dulce Marìa Loynaz (Cuban; Cervantes Prize laureate, 1992) was published by White Pine Press in 2002. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic in 2002, translating the poetry and fiction of contemporary Dominican women.