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Voyage to Dénouement,


ISSUE:  Spring 2006

 
A child’s hand smears a wall     the reproof is bitter
     wall contrives to linger     child, punisher, gone in smoke
An artisan lays on hues:     lemon, saffron, gold
     stare hard before you start covering the whole room
Inside the thigh a sweet mole     on the balding
     skull an irregular island     what comes next
After the burnt forests     silhouettes wade
     liquid hibiscus air
Velvet rubs down to scrim     iron utensils
     discolor unseasoned
Secret codes of skin and hair
     go dim     left from the light too long

Because my wish was to have things simpler
     than they were      memory too became
a smudge     sediment from a hand
     repeatedly lying on the same surface
Call it a willful optimism
     from when old ownerships unpeeled     curled out
into the still nameless     new imperium     Call it
     haplessness of a creature     not yet ready
for her world-citizen’s papers
     (Across the schoolroom mural     bravely
small ships did under sail traverse great oceans)
     Rain rededicates the exhumed
African burial ground
     traffic lashes its edges
the city a scar a fragment floating
     on tidal dissolution
The opal on my finger
     fiercely flashed till the hour it started to crumble

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