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Transubstantiation
- Prairie Schooner
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 77, Number 4, Winter 2003
- p. 64
- 10.1353/psg.2003.0128
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Prairie Schooner 77.4 (2003) 64
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Transubstantiation
Marilyn Krysl
In the rank and file, nuts and bolts of Hardware
I spiral into the Aisle of Many Colors.
Two lovers lean over, perusing fiery shades
the gods, with erotic foresight, provide for bedrooms,and a baby, teething, chews a sample card,
gumming it with her tiny incisors
while Mother saunters nuances of iris and azure.
And I, bent on my errand, not open to interventionby clerks or gods, why am I suddenly weeping?
Is it from sorrow, joy, or that third condition,
the precision of seeing exactly what is before us?
When I pay, pass through those glass doorsam I merely leaving hardware, or giving myself
to the gleaming street? And that man at the curb
with that tin can for change: that's the bowl
I was sent here to fill. Kneel, give him your name.Touch his hand. Kiss his mouth. Become whole.
Marilyn Krysl's Warscape With Lovers won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Prize. She is the author of a collection of stories, How to Accommodate Men (Coffee House P).
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