Arrow

“to suffer/ The slings and arrows”
                   –Shakespeare, Hamlet

A war, or
a slain row
of sirs, gents,

grandsons, now garlands.
Again, the liar’s snow:
a snarl of wording.

Low in the grassland,
suffering. A frost
the awns sharpen.

Furlongs drawn to rift
the fir-sawn gruffness,
a ruth-torn stringer. Oh,

this word sings
the narrows raw, or
inward snags organs

whole. Worse, laws
the songster: owl
to swan. I ungreen this

tree with thorn. Rough-
run the hunt, draw
in tear and air.

Emily Rosko is the author of two books: Prop Rockery, winner of the 2011 Akron Poetry Prize, and Raw Goods Inventory, awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is editor of A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (U Iowa P 2011) and an editor at Crazyhorse literary journal. She is assistant professor at the College of Charleston.