Elizabeth Robinson: California Poets Part 9, Five Poems

Elizabeth Robinson

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Elizabeth Robinson

Five Poems

Legend

after Piero della Francesca’s fresco,

“The Legend of the True Cross”

This records what no one is meant

to see: a whimsy, the non-space

below the border of the dado.  Here,

at the level of a child’s eyes (should a child

ever be permitted into sacred space),

some canny hand shaped a fish

and a bird, both swimming—or

flying—in the same green medium

where they are clearly not meant

to be.

By what means do we see the presence

which is not there?  We see it only

at this intersection, what some call

a “cross.” Because a cross is a contradiction

that cancels itself out.  St. Francis

would bless the irreverence

of these creatures who reclaim the sacred

by their ambiguous movement through it.

And should a fragment of wood rot

into the green water or, splintering,

disappear into the green air?

Something that we never saw is gone.

It is only there that the cross

is true.

Ascending

Remember this.

Light moves like a ladder.

Remember that you

are ascending the ladder.

That you are a window.

Remember nothing more

than this, that you

are nothing more than

this. Pollen, rain, pure

air on the window.  Abolish

memory. When the light wilts

you climb up, you climb

down. Your cheeks yellowed

with pollen. In the recess

of your mouth, you climb

up, your tongue slick with

the light.

Not-a-Monster Rhapsody

Sing bones or bonds, sing

apophatic catalog of

un-monster.  Sing broth

and sing stirring. Sing spoon

slapped against the back of your

thigh.

Stirring our tune

is the prick of the thing

waking up, waking up.  Who

has an appetite for

waking up.  Sing gruel.

Sing viscous, though not

vivid.  Not, naught, knot,

nod at this.  Sing jewel, sing

fuel.  Sing:

you are what you haven’t eaten.

Haven’t eaten

yet.  Sing of what wasn’t

ever there.  Un-monster air.

Zip, zed, zilch, zero-ogre

no-golem, nada-beast

burnt on the tongue, the tune

that eats you

you haven’t sung.

Temblor Rhapsody

When nothing moves, nothing

shoves, nothing

shows itself.  A little

seam in the crack

of nothing: smiling

the thin fissure of its

face. “When” returns to

“then.” An image of

nothing knotting time

in broken space.

Author Bio:

Elizabeth Robinson has published several collections of poetry, most recently Vulnerability Index (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books), Excursive (Roof Books), and with Susanne Dyckman, Rendered Paradise (Apogee Press). Robinson was a winner of the National Poetry Series for Pure Descent and the Fence Modern Poets Prize for Apprehend, and her book On Ghosts was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry in 2013. In the past five years, Robinson has been awarded Editors’ Choice awards prizes from Scoundrel Time and New Letters. A 2023 Pushcart Prize winner, she was included in the 2025 Best American Poetry.