Mineral 100, 151, 429 (Anhydrite)
BY Rosemarie Dombrowski
(Poems based on & “cut up” from the mineral entries in the National Audubon
Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals)
Without water, [nothing is] good.
[Here, everything is] chemical,
evaporat[ing madly until there’s nothing left but] salt.
[But the] pale lavender [fields are] mine—
90 degrees [and] brittle [to the touch].
[The body is pulled in] three directions,
[covered in] large lilacs [and] sedimentary rocks,
bedded at Ajo, uneven [and] rare
[like a gypsy], grayish blue
[and resistant to] gravity [until the end].
Rosemarie Dombrowski is the co-founder of the Phoenix Poetry Series,
the founder of Rinky Dink Press (a micropoetry publisher), and a poetry
editor at Four Chambers. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in Hartskill
Review, Stonecoast Review, Anthro/Poetics: An Anthology on Culture and
Writing about Culture, Poetry and Prose for the Phoenix Art Museum, The
Review Review, and elsewhere. Her first collection, The Book of Emergencies (2014), was published by Five Oaks Press. She has received four Pushcart nominations and was a finalist for the Pangea Poetry Prize in 2015. Her
second collection, The Philosophy of Unclean Things, is forthcoming from
Finishing Line Press. She’s currently a Lecturer of Literature/CW at Arizona
State University’s Downtown campus.