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behind the door
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
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behind the door bodies preferred to think of themselves crowding cheek by jowl into barns jewelled with grain heavy hay & a farmer to keep them warm & fed to bring them newly born into rooms of horn & hoof rut and root rain on the roof of their brains “to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth” animals girdled in the cluck & moon of milk egg white of cat & pigeon eyeblink & heartslump animals were muscles made throatnoises through the lump of months secret in the stomach of wood they arced or folded in ecstacy eyes flooded with oil when the farmer touched them nuzzled their chins & udders in winter inside ribs of wood pails of water spoke to them language of grass & sun what in the nights that are long husbands to wives say 18 / By Word of Mouth of grass & sun & the opening of gates of summer in them the way water sits when it is almost ice animals were leather the farmer wore close to his heart they were pouches filled with tobacco in his dream vests he wore to church at night they spoke silently to one another the bodies dangled like babies in the hump of barn standing & standing in puddles of time weight of nights wet as sand & when January punched at them sandbagged snow against their eyes they lay down into the sweet grunt of straw that melodied dreams hidden in hides the paunch of dark the lazy lift of time left like smoke in the crease of dreams all that long waiting bodies were blood in a barn of bone The Poetry of Dennis Cooley / 19 ...