Karen Neuberg
Karen Neuberg's work has appeared in Barrow Street, Columbia Poetry Review, Diagram, and Phoebe, among others. She's a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, holds an MFA from the New School and is associate editor of Inertia Magazine. Her chapbook, Detailed Still, was published in 2009 by Poets Wear Prada Press. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn and West Hurley, New York.
Tremendous Idea
Be wild; that is how to clear the river
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves
Then a tremendous idea flashes its backside
at you in the dark. You hear its raspberry tongue
sound a dare. If you fall into dream, you'll lose
the scent, lose the string you're conscientiously
following over scree that is under your feet.
You feel the grip of sleep pulling you
hard, down into a familiar garden
where the tremendous idea is praying for you,
praying you find it on every sheet, divining
a redemption, dancing under a floodlight
of rain, willing itself to spin out of control
onto the floor of your four-chambered beat.
Secrets pass hands there, and ideas are wild.