Runner-Up for the 2010 Bishop Prize in Verse

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woman’s mouth

she walks out on the high road,
the night furrowing its lips behind her.
low, black lines stitched and crusted
like stars in the sky, patterns so soft
that you’d never know a man so meticulously
carved them, day after day, his chisel tunneling
into the soft rumple-skin. jaws as black and sturdy
as steel, long, cording jaws that cringe
into a shape like the jagged rim
of a vase. her face is a scrap of clay,
a shard of glass, a chip of wood, nicked
from the black moon as it fell back into
the dead gorge that night had left, when it
pulled tight its lips and drank itself.

and all the little orphan stars pour as dust
into the dark, tender sores of her lips.

—Gadi Cohen

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Read about the winners of the 2010 Bishop Prizes here.