Unblock me here
            where I muck around
digress from 
                        any course. Uncurse 
            me and coerce me
into song—though my notes
                        be blunt, even boring 
            might pierce 
this listlessness.
                        Help me conjure
            something from nothing:
prestidigitate,
                        O divagating one,        
            this slurry of words
into an indigo bunting
                        or a double rainbow 
            after the storm-slant 
where I’m caught
                        pacing inside this 
            screened-in
porch of want— 
                        still parched
            and poised
to be seized 
                        once more
            by a frisson
of wonder. 

Sharon Dolin is the award-winning author of seven poetry collections, most recently Imperfect Present, Manual for Living, and Whirlwind (all from the University of Pittsburgh Press). She is also the author of two books of translation from Catalan: Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems by Gemma Gorga (Saturnalia Books, 2021, winner of the Malinda A. Markham Translation Prize, and Gemma Gorga’s prose poems Book of Minutes (Oberlin College Press, 2019), as well as a prose memoir, Hitchcock Blonde (Terra Nova Press 2020). The recipient of a 2021 NEA Fellowship in Translation, she lives in New York City, where she is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press.