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beggars? Why invent novelty phrases like “the homeless” as if our situation were modern and special instead of ancient and normal, the problem of greed and selWshness? The beggars turned toward me I put money in the woman’s cup though I didn’t like her facial sores her drowned eyes bobbed to the surface as if they believed for a second something new was about to happen but nothing was so the eyes sank rapidly back like crabs into sand, and sorrow pressed into me like a hot iron after which I hurried through the hurrying crowd sky overhead primrose and lilac, skyscrapers uncanny mirrors Wlled with tender cloud bouquets to overtake my friends who had strolled ahead chatting so as not to be embarrassed by the sight of charity, the bad wet rag of need. Not Spoken Tim Seibles march 2002 As if thirst were not a wound. As if the thirst for company were not a wound. Consciousness the one shadow from which light grows. As if all the ache Xowed from the same bruise. Near dawn. My blood caught in its circle I think of your body your legs opening. 230 part 11 parading poetry And the light hairs strung along your wrists. As if your shoulders. As if the muscular turn of your hips. As if I could tilt your mouth to this dent in my chest. So, bit by bit, it becomes unmistakable. This not knowing how to say. As if I had already broken into the last room and found the words still not English. As if being Xesh were not call enough. Why stay here to be American? Where what is exactly sexual has no country. Let’s go. Whole words. Whole worlds slow between us. Trying to pronounce themselves. Unlost. The body, the one sacred book. My hand. My hands know so little of your hands. The names of pleasure held in chains taken in ships. Rue Beaurepaire, I and II Marilyn Hacker july 2002 I On a wide side-street that leads to the canal job-seeking Meridional families, retired mail-clerks, philoprogenitive Chinese textile workers, Tunisian grocers have found an issue everyone agrees Hacker / Rue Beaurepaire, I and II 231 ...

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