April 16
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	eleanor swanson
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	WHAT THE LIGHT IS LIKE
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	The leaves of the trees burn with green fire. The sky's blue shows through to another galaxy. Shadows are ebony. The mourning doves fall silent. Flickers point beaks upward. Bits of glass in the street burn to the touch. No dogs bark. Cats levitate. The light washes the lines of grief and anger from the face of the woman who strides across town, shopping bags swinging from each hand, the one who talks to herself and knows she is called mad.
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	about the poem
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	"What the Light Is Like" describes an extraordinary summer day. The light seems enhanced, hyper-real: phenomenologically both of this world and out of this world. The description isn't grounded in a point-of-view character, but is scenic, a photograph that has stopped time. Then external reality literally "strides" through the sublime (if disturbingly so) moment, and by the end of the poem the perspective shifts dramatically to that of the woman who "knows she is called mad." She is the ultimate representation of the real--for her, the light is salutary: it "washes the lines of grief and anger from [her] face."
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	about the poet
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	Eleanor Swanson's work has appeared in a number of publications, including The Missouri Review, High Plains Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Southern Review. Her 2003 poetry collection, A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium, won the Ruth Stevens Manuscript Competition (NFPS Press), and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her most recent collection, Trembling in the Bones, was published in 2006 by Ghost Road Press. Before the Reef, her debut novel, has just been released by Plain View Press. She lives in Denver and teaches American literature and fiction and poetry workshops at Regis University.
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