The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 7/25/06)

[RetroLounge]

Ars Poetica

----What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
-----—Czeslaw Milosz

Can I be saved by writing your hands
onto my skin? Or by imagining
your breath? The mouthfuls of air won’t reek
of burning flesh but taste of wine. Pull back
the sheets so that they rustle like a wing
against a wing. The room will fill with birds.
Not birds with wire claws but mockingbirds
whose feathers are not formed from clouds of ash.
Our sleep won’t carry nightmares in its arms
but drop them by the door like heavy stones.
The moon could smudge the wall with fingerprints,
but there won’t be a moon, and I will find
my way to you through memory or touch,
by following my voice back to its source.

Jehanne Dubrow

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Jehanne Dubrow was born in Vicenza, Italy, and grew up in Yugoslavia, Zaire, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and the United States. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Hudson Review, Tikkun, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, Measure: an Annual Review of Formal Poetry, and Blue Mesa Review

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RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[miss_american_pie]

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