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    Licking River

    I lick the pollen from the nooks and crannies of your voice
    it had settled there in anticipation

    the wind shifts direction like a verse
    you once impressed on my lips

    before I touched them to the mirror
    and looked to find your secret name there
    a woman who broke her eyes by crying

    niche empath cutie
    and all the stars barricaded inside your skull

    looking with the third eye
    all signs point to yes

    nothing matters more to me than this
    come to me, come into my army



    Broken-Wing Display


    (In memory of Sean Bonney)

    The sun on its way out of there
    horizon forced to give up its secret
    the last word on the majesty of the sexes

         —and your most recent bird
    the black seed from which a whole sky is born
    whose words are our most remote ancestors
    their syllables collapse into heaps of silence

    a dozen pockets where you never find your keys
    echoes multiply in the locked box where you store them
    like a heart filled with laughter
    your broken teeth tore to pieces

     

    Barry Schwabsky is art critic for The Nation. His most recent book of poetry is Trembling Hand Equilibrium (Black Square Editions, 2015). A new collection will be published, also by Black Square, in 2021.

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