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Two Poems
John Balaban
‘Her mother planted a garden in Manhattan. / In that garden is a tree. Some look on it and feel restored. / Others, when the wind lifts its leaves, want to scream.’
Opening Invocation
Jean-Paul de Dadelsen
‘Or otherwise, leaving the shore of the intermediate sea, / has it been a while since they’ve gone ahead / into the interior of lands of the spirit?’
Self-Portrait as Amnesiac
John Burnside
‘Shoeboxes lined with eggs and empty / pomegranates drying in a bowl, / mousebones and wicker, chess pieces, muddled coats.’
What the Doctor Said
Raymond Carver
‘He said are you a religious man do you kneel down / in forest groves and let yourself ask for help.’
A Numbered Graph That Shows How Each Part of the Body Would Fit Into A Chair
Mary Jo Bang
‘It’s a simple truth that one can occupy two / places at one time while sitting in a chair—the same way a / poseable doll can be divided from her dress.’
The Day Etta Died
John Burnside
‘I was marking a stack of essays / on Frank O’Hara / and each had a Wiki- / paragraph to say / who Genet was.’
Picnic
Emily Berry
‘Watching the sea is like watching something in pieces continually striving to be whole / Imagine trying to pick up a piece of the sea and show it to a person / I tried to do that.’
On Jupiter Place
Nicholas Christopher
‘I didn’t know who she was anymore / maybe I never did or could –’
The Lady and the Skull
Angela Carter
‘I believed I had defined the problem. / With which the picked skull had presented me.’