POETSRESPOND TO PRINTS January 7, 2016 at 6:00 pm

P O E T S R E S P O N D TO P R I N T S
January 7, 2016 at 6:00 p.m., Channing Peake Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
Chryss Yost
Chryss Yost served as Santa Barbara Poet Laureate from April 2013 to April 2015. She
is the author of Mouth & Fruit and co-editor of Gunpowder Press where she founded
the Shoreline Voices Project. She teaches poetry at the Santa Barbara Music & Arts
Academy with her husband, George Yatchisin.
Target
I think of the apple I balance on my head,
the target behind me, the bow in your hand.
Things that don’t look it turn out to be hard:
like leveling arrows, like jumping a king,
like reading my grandmother’s elegant script.
I think of the apples, her cattle, the farm:
tallies of endings. I think of the dead,
always the dead. Inside their daguerreotypes
spidered by time, I stand as they stood:
waiting for arrows, still and afraid.
Ours is the sign of the archer and luck.
Things that don’t look it turn out to be hard:
ours is also the sign of the skull and mistake,
the seeds and their skins, the games and the bets,
targets we aim for and if luck allows hit:
the harms we inherit and pass on in our blood.
Things that don’t look it turn out to be hard.
Things that don’t look it turn out to be hard.
Target by Tony Askew