Three Poems
The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, SUNY Buffalo, puts out an annual chapbook of Three Poems by one poet and I’m happy to be this year’s featured poet. Thanks to Curator James Maynard and designer Edric Mesmer. It is usually mailed to Collection donors but this year, for obvious reasons, it is only available in a digital version for now.
Cover image: Group IV, No. 3. The Ten Largest, Youth, Hilma af Klint, 1907.

Social Isolation: Day 1
somehow
I woke up before dawn
to see the moon and Mars
conjunction.
The moon was waning,
crescent, Mars a bright
virus speeding away from or toward
its open mouth. They hung low
in the south east sky
just above the tree line.
I tried to take a picture
but it flashed back only
a bathroom window
in need of washing.
Still, I saw it.
And the not yet risen sun
managed to make the sky—just a little—
blue and the moon a little gold.
Erechtheion
Joy in the throat
no birds
weather coming
I don’t know what my hands are doing
build holes
for lightning
one in the roof
one in the earth below
all the way to saltwater
build around those holes
a place to remember
the strike
then get out of the way
build around the place
a city
a port
warships
silver mines
It is very quiet here
before? after? lightning
maybe I’ve lost my hearing lost the plan
We hate the emperor made him
by forgetting weather
I am only this age now
I am not a container for all the other ages I’ve been
not an urn for ash either
Clouds building in the south
so quiet
Heliotropic
Now that the branches are bare
it’s clear how they bend
away from clutter
toward light.
We don’t have to fall back
into darkness
forever.
There comes a point
each year
between breaths between seconds
even the sun holds still for.
What new form takes shape in the dark?
Maybe a bird a tree
maybe a girl
who loves the light
and pulls us all back
into its grace.
Turn your face that way.
About the Author
Sherry Robbins was born into an Air Force family at Sandia Air Base, grew up around the world, and has called Buffalo home for most of her life. Robbins founded Orchard Press and co-founded Weird Sisters Press, producing letterpress editions of poems. She works as a teaching artist.
Robbins’s previous work includes the complete edition of Or, the Whale (BlazeVOX Books), two chapbooks, Snapshots of Paradise (Just Buffalo Press) and Or, the Whale (shuffaloff press), as well as dozens of poems published in literary journals and anthologies here and in Spain and Portugal—including Salmagundi, Denver Quarterly, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Earth’s Daughters, Bright Hill Press, An Outriders Anthology,Poets at Work, and Resist Much, Obey Little.
Her latest book, Under World, is due out this July from Outriders Poetry Project.
Published in an edition of 300 copies,
of which the first 50 have been numbered and
signed by the poet.
The Poetry Collection
of the University Libraries
Buffalo, NY | April 2020
library.buffalo.edu/pl