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For VN’s birthday this year, I thought I would try a new poetic form created by Terrance Hayes called a shovel poem. The idea is to take a line from another poet’s poem and use each word as successive end words to each line of a new poem, so you can read the original line by reading down the right margin. My poem borrows a line from John Shade which, alas, might be more appropriate to a death day poem.

Nabokov Dying

By lamplight of a febrile dream, I

Saw the house in Ithaca where we lived

In fifty-seven. We sat out on

The unmown lawn at night. Moths flew

Between white moons of dandelions. And on

Your blouse you pinned a firefly and in

Your hair a dark Vanessa closed the

Book of its wings. Darling, your eyes reflected

For an instant my face, then nothing, nothing but sky.

Matt Roth

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