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The Missouri Review 27.1 (2004) 140-141



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Regression Analysis

Back to the sleepy years, rise
Of the rear fin and the crenelated pompadour,
Moon like a hubcap rolling loose
In a night sky more sex than science,
Beyond the evils of geometry at three in the afternoon,
Back to the long muscles born out of sweat and throb,
Soft hair cradling a face at the sock hop,
The nudge of new breasts under blouse and arousal,
And records spun at the speed of crazed wheels
Taking you somewhere far from yourself,
Stars in a thin glitter, burnt out above
A swagger of smoke in the parking lot,
And then the Sunday bells and church doors open
To the half-dead and the bed-wetters,
Past the end of Genesis and deep into Deuteronomy,
Black book from which no one escaped,
Wound where the scruples put down roots,
Years before the fallen protocols and the undertow,
Before the wrought-iron agonies, sudden ripples in the heart,
Cordage of veins and the ropy tendons,
Before the ice, wind-whetted, at the lip of the downspout,
And sirens scaring the air with a bloody scream, [End Page 140]
Blockage of wrecks on a gravel road, plunge of fire
In the tapped-out flats built by sawtooth and studnail,
Before the darkness drained over everything, except
The unforgiving light in the guilty room.
Elton Glaser is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and editor of the Akron Series in Poetry. He has published five full-length collections of poems, most recently Pelican Tracks (SIU Press, 2003). With William Greenway, he coedited I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio (University of Akron Press, 2002). Among his awards are two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, five fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Crab Orchard Award.


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