Poetry Resurrection: The Immaculate Conceptionally

I’ve recently returned to writing poetry. My goal is to complete a chapbook in the next few weeks or so. I’ve also gone digging in the attic for some of my older work. There was one box up there stuffed with old notebooks, napkins, cereal box tops, and utility bills— all loaded down with my scrawl. This is when I still used pencil, ink, and a Brother typewriter versus the plastic letters of my keyboard. Some of them are unbelievably awful, but there are others that continue to sing. In the next few weeks, I’m thinking I may share some with you. The following small work was written twenty years ago.


The Immaculate Conceptionally

The soft wood,
then a fracture in your dark.
Light footfalls on broken toes;
thickets lean against grassy slivers
of silver moonlit bone.

Soon the thrush
takes flight with the swallow
beneath the gold shelter of skin.
The flurried feathers of thick lashes
thumb and thrust.


Copyright © 1991 Angel Zapata