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March 2017 Issue [Readings]

Measure For a Long Wound (Wednesday was Such a Bad Day)

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By Erín Moure, the author of more than a dozen volumes of poetry. Her selected poems, Planetary Noise, was published this month by Wesleyan University Press.

I am thinking of thinking and unthinking
under the circumstances of thinking.

I got up at 2:30 a.m. to read Frank O’Hara
I took 2 aspirins for headache (we were falling
off the porch laughing last night)
Whom I believe in

There are ambiguities in this life that are, as
Ken would say, “entirely” beautiful

Wanting only to be adept at what I do, I
compress all of it even time
Trying to get words out of the head fast as
possible before they vanish
The lake rises under the storm, I don’t mean
any lake, I mean this lake
“Lake Hmi-hmoo”
Swollen water pouring over a lifted bed of stone
It’s weak stone anyhow, it’s old lakeshore, it
crumbles

We can only lie down in the tents of our minds
Our chests upward breathing and legs touching
the sheet cotton, two legs, whole
The fan moaning, stirs the heat up
We humans, it was us
invented sunbathing and the word “strafe” the
words “civilian population” the word “person”
Animals just look at us dumbfounded aren’t we
all the same


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