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Michelle Taransky

    by Mary Beth Maier
    Published 

was born in Camden. Her first book, Barn Burned, Then, was selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Taransky lives in Philadelphia and works at Kelly Writers House. She also teaches writing at Penn and Temple University.

Audio: Michelle Taransky reads "Profit & Loss Statement" and "Fall Instructions"

Profit & Loss Statement

I have been a gypsy a couple

Of times she said if I said

In the past, each color stood

To remind you your birth

Name was Fox and please quit

Forgetting the charge to hand

Me nothing

But letters

Because they are lies if

Nothing else nothing past tense

Part the wilderness sound

Asleep dreaming the accountant is

Saying how can you imagine anything

Incorrectly— Besides what else is there in addition

To naming the dead fox

Robert and referring to him

As Robber, as Giver

Who gives us dreams of his dreams of the fox-fire

Out of which barely one thrush

Emerged still

The leaves turned I

Swore a storm was

On its way however

Without lightning who is able to tell that

The letter had everything to do

With Master turning to the teller

To tell her he knows

So what if the piles turn into

Guilt after guilt, where no matter

The ways to a way to admit it

This line is about the theft

It is about time

Safes that stay safe

Fall Instructions

In the safe you will

Find the combination to open the fire safe

At the end of the world

Is an argument and its stolen

Negotiator putting stones

Into the wild

Fire

Into saying wills will want to forgive

You and change you who made matter

And measured night falling on

That space that is afforded them

Did them put them in a ditch

Burying them and buried their ashes if

Then there

The smoke clouds are burglars

Are all we know is that it is the fall

So far we had come so far

Along the edge worrying about impending

Falls into the line of grave the graves'

Diggers are crying

Wolf where there is no need

For accounting the mistaking

Of the property lines for babies

I cannot help

Myself but cry whenever anyone else is

Crying

Is placing all

The firewood in the firesafe

We will make sure we storm

Out before the fall

When we are told to count

Casualties I asked you to keep time

That time it would have been enough to be-

Fall us

Both poems from Barn, Burned Then (2009)