from A Day of Glass


Steven Salmoni

54

And that sun itself is number, moves as number, but among
such places as if neglected. “At first I thought,” outside the
door, who first is still unminded, their names, but

asked to come to our senses, and say, “formerly in line along
the border,” the gravity on both sides, run upon gold oak,
these alternations in the weights of the arches, that would beg
for relevance, you said, but you were walking, and the house
was, or the oak, and the reason you passed, saying, I presume,
to speak.


55

Occupied, that is, when one arrives to study light, some light
so that light’s compartment would wager that we have no
evidence, but enough for saying “there, there probably is,”
that is, there are some here.  Also, let’s agree

because the latter was a grey-scale account one could render
mathematically, while I saw no way to mean “empty by
means of which” all kinds, the sentence, the sentence so it is



58

The last word of the question, the shape of an island to itself.

Is this to ask whether the question seeks an island for itself
while it still belongs to everything it questions?

The island itself, while in itself, corresponds to this question,
as the question corresponds to its arising.

The questions “of one,” and “of one belonging,” are in this
constellation, and when its arc rises, through the trees,

this is the question of trees, of their island.


Steven Salmoni received a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University and is faculty and Department Chair of Writing at Pima Community College, in Tucson, AZ. Recent publications include the chapbook Landscapes, With Green Mangoes (Chax Press), poems in Spinning Jenny, Spiral Orb, Versal, Upstairs at Duroc and Bombay Gin and articles in the Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein and Studies in Travel Writing. He serves on the Board of Directors for “POG,” a Tucson-based poetry organization.