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by Wesli Court No season has a solitary note —
Its music may be frivolous or solemn,
Its tempi often change. A summer’s tone
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by Wesli Court Dear cousin Jo, when I was but a tad
You baby-sat me when I wasn’t good,
For which you knew the reason: You understood
Me better than my parents.
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by Rhina P. Espaillat The youngest of the nouveau-poor
eat with the neighbors when they can.
They know they mustn't ask for more.
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by Rhina P. Espaillat The wind stopped breathing on the field.
At once the grass and its immense
meaningless turbulence
stood still, as in an instant sealed—
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by Daniel G. Hoffman I am the chink between two voids.
I clasp both ends of an endless chain.
Who knows me knows there is no repose—
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by Gastão Cruz. Translated by Alexis Levitin. They obstuct their ears with noise
or maybe music, a flexible notion
compared to the arduous idea of poetry
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by Gastão Cruz. Translated by Alexis Levitin. I saw no one close to the river leaving Kaunas
but earlier for several days I'd gone past one
where the graves stretched
along a hillside's gentle slope;
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by Kostas Kartelias. Translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft. I'm leaving secretly,
wounded by a trick.
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by Kostas Kartelias. Translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft. Like Circe the witch, like the cursed night,
like a bat that sucks my blood
you take whatever truth I might have
to wrap in lies and sell.
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by Kostas Kartelias. Translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft. I sat alone again tonight in the dark
and I strained to hear the words they made up
through the years,
a sound that remains as music
and breathes.
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by Elliot Richman I spend another night with banshee dreams.
Baudelaire walks with me through streets lit
by the junk food stations of the cross.
Rimbaud, drunk on absinthe, attempts
to seduce me at a cowboy bar.
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by Michael Salcman Time has sandpapered this nose too much,
it needs repair: a thin skin
of burnt sienna and turpentine will do
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by David R. Slavitt Ice
In the heart of the ice is fire.
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Darkness
Summer is torment, a lavishness of light
that beats down relentless into our dazzled eyes
until we yearn for winter's return and the darkness
we had nearly learned to live with. A silent wife
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Light
Unable to sleep, we are always tired. The eye
of day stares down, relentless as a god
inspecting our defects that in these endless days
of exquisitely protracted light are glaring.
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by David R. Slavitt My father lay in bed and watched TV,
the Yankees games, although sometimes his eyes
closed, which he explained once was how he'd learned
to follow the team, on radio in Bridgeport
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by Philip Sultz From the sky the cawing crows see everything,
flying it seems to the corners of the land.
Advance parties on horseback
cross the shallow tributary of the Bug River.
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by Alice Teeter Here on this mountain the sounds are strange –
the snuffling rustling of small creatures
in the leaves, the call of owls first here
then far away, flying a wide range
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by John Timpane Though Orville flew first, Wilbur flew the best at Kitty Hawk.
By Orville’s hand the Flyer stayed up long enough to say
It flew – but Wilbur was first pilot, hauling on or off
Hip cradle, elevator, pulleys. Airborne cussedness
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by John Timpane Polynesian sailors could tell where islands
Lay within a hundred miles just by trailing
Fingers off the prow of the boat. They knew that
Waves are responsive
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