OK, here's the last Craig Arnold poem from the October issue of Poetry that I'm going to post. It ran on an inside cover, which is where the magazine pays homage to poets who have recently died. The magazine doesn't print the title of the poem—a half-assed homage, seems to me—so I searched for the opening line on the Internet. According to Dan Hunt on The Rumpus—who met Arnold once—this is an excerpt from "Made Flesh." He quotes parts of the poem that I like even more than this chunk. I may have to buy the book after all.
FALL creeps like a slow flame
over a maple limb by limb
leaves that once fanned their hands
open wanting to put themselves
all over everything begin to g low
brave vermillion and lively yellow
let at last their fingers curl
into the palm and let go
The same fire is touching us
around the edges licking wrinkles
into the corners of our eyes
making the skin inside our elbows
silky as old coins
And when we lie
together and I feel your bones
blaze and the rose of your face unfolds
and the incandescence of your skin
crackles like the paper at the tip
of a drawn-on cigarette and dies
in a final fluttering of ash
Then then we feel death
as the deepest coming then we ease unhurried
into the bud of body then we learn
little by little to relinquish
gracefully and less afraid
each time to let each other slip
slowly out of our clasp made
fire made flower made flesh
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