Per Contra An International Journal of the Arts, Literature, and Ideas

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issue 26 > poetry

  • Shaved

    by Lili Bita. Translated by Robert Zaller.
    Look at you!
    Bent in shame.
    carrying a change
    of panties,

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  • The Closing Year

    by Rhina P. Espaillat
    Beside the Merrimack, in white,
    cocooned from winds they hope to ride,
    the huddled boats are sleeping tight,
    marooned on stilts above the tide.

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  • History

    by Anne Frydman
    History is the unwanted cough
    the dream, the unexpected life
    the poem about to be written
    coming indoors, past wet foxes

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  • Spiderwebs

    by Rachel Hadas
    I saw two spiderwebs above the brook.
    Sitting on a stone, feet in icy water,
    I might have been anticipating what
    I didn't know.

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  • The Nest

    by Rachel Hadas
    Lying in bed,
    I walk the road
    inside my head.

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  • in homage to death v

    by Donald Kuspit
    emperor,
            you wear my old clothes,
    and mothers and fathers,

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  • in homage to death vi

    by Donald Kuspit
    i aborted you in wonder,
                                             you revived
    in shadow,

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  • in homage to death vii

    by Donald Kuspit
    imperative as innocence,
                                             you beguiled me
    with promise,

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  • in homage to death viii

    by Donald Kuspit
    death shall not
                         part us,
    nor unite us,

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  • From Saturday

    by Jorge Martillo. Translated by Fernando Iturburu and Alexis Levitin.
    Now I can no longer pursue nothingness

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  • Women Who Have Lost Children

    by Carolyn Raphael
    dress in colored mourning clothes,
    choosing the patterns of despair
    or camouflage in beige and gray.

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  • Curriculum

    by David Slavitt
    Master the rudiments because you will need them,
    some of them anyway. But go on from there

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  • Autogenethliacum

    by Lewis Turco
    Today I have reached the year my father was
    when he died — I was thirty-four, old enough,

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  • The Houdini Poem

    by Robert Zaller
    The first riddle
    is how to get
    into the poem
    the second
    how to get out.

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  • Hamlet in Eden

    by Robert Zaller
    In the alternate folio
    Hamlet fights no silly duel

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  • The Truth of Islands

    by Robert Zaller
                               The islands
    grow dim on their bed of mist.
    We fix their positions

    More...

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