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Authors & Articles > Pentimento
Poetry, Spring 1985   [Print article] [E-mail to a friend]
 
Pentimento
by Michael Burkard
 

It will always be just love, spider failure,
curious, worn dead life, home in September,
far from all love. The radiant agent of
the breast is my express, my station of
pentimento, my erasure of the hemmed.
My sad dream when my eyes said I do not
love you, as good as we are.

In the unusual season the sun rises, harp
for a stone, starry glaze from the web
burned widely with paint. And thus and
thee, these two guarded friends, where
your dear love was a name.

Yes, but the bowl has no odor—and the agent
orange is the effort of a traveler,
poverty and stone, death's palate to kiss
the baby. All children government.
A spoon knows better, an ear.
Pentimento of little eggs, accept my
dead thus, my voracious female bullet.
Take heed when the wind calls—it may
be your uncle, smoking a cigar
in his death, whiff of smoke
doubled by the world. And looking
into the anger recall the octave
of the spoon, eat accordingly.

Follow me into the continual
death of the house, shelter for
a number. It is today my coat
is a dagger, bled—today

I cut the rope. Today I come back
to the night, full of sadness
and your letter. Today I buy a house
in my mind, and sleep there with
my children. Today I shower with you.
Today I submit to the interview, today.
Today I burn the bookcase, today.
Today I bury my head in the groove
of the poor, today my breast is so dry
it is intense. Today I tonight.
Today I yesterday. Today I mail these stamps
to the mule Jennifer. Today I am my
wicked aunt. Today I paint the vertical
sorrow of each mirror, each thenness,
each scale of the double government.
Today I film flour. Today I come back.
To your night. Today. Today.


Copyright © Michael Burkard
Buy This Issue
Spring 1985 Cover
Cover art by David True

Guest-edited by
Thomas Lux

Poetry
Issue #36
Vol. 11/1
ISBN: 0933277784
Price: $14.95 05/15/1985
 
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