Shift

"from" "The Shadow Plant"The plant etched on the wall sits in its pot as calm as anything- as any thing nothuman. The cars sough by, less frequent than at day. If I switched off the light again, I'd see again how theytrace ghostlike, restless lights across the walls, emblems of human hunger. The old wood mantle-clock callssomeone, me, to task-more briskly than a heart. The shadow clearly forms a parrot, perched on the edge of the pot, its head turned to the right-above it, on one side, a stem with paired leaves stretching out like arms, and on the other sidea single leaf shaped like a heart. . . . ("The Shadow Plant" first appeared in the "Paris Review" ) "Shift" traces the love between two women over several years and explores the intricacies of family relationships. Jeredith Merrin's poems, moving from ecstatic love lyrics to poems of familial affection and damage, to grave, more mature love poems, are psychologically loaded and technically sophisticated. These poems convey a wonderful sense of the sexual and social complexity of human relationships. Jeredith Merrin is associate professor of English at Ohio State University. She is author of "An Enabling Humility: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and the Uses of Tradition."