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Selected
Poems
THE
21ST CENTURY BLOOMS
Karl Gluck
AND
DANCED ALL THE MODERN DANCES
Erica Carter
HAVING
A BANKRUPTCY
Margaret Barbour Gilbert
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ISSUE
NUMBER FOUR
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ISSUE
NUMBER SIX
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ISSUE
NUMBER SEVEN
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ISSUE
NUMBER EIGHT
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ISSUE NUMBER NINE
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PROPERTY
It took him a long time to see
he was visiting
because most of the people
were friendly
and didn’t know
they were only visiting too,
so they acted as if
they owned things.
And he thought before
the sea rose it would be good
to write down
their voices,
what they said
and what they might have
said and what
they could not say.
So he listened hard to write
it down and sometimes
he’d move
the heard or unheard voices
gently so they could be lit by
different kinds of light,
as if they were old
family mirrors,
voices lit by tears,
voices whispering, naked,
inward voices,
fallible.
Voices set against despair,
some in the awful effort
to be brave,
become so.
The voices spoke to him
of those who were in
part what they were
and in part
what they could have been
if they had learned
to leave sooner,
or stayed longer.
If they had only been what
was needed, made
their own luck, been
better able to love.
Ronald Wardall |
