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Michael Rothenberg   Two Poems

The Big River   xxxxxxxx Hear my name in sleep, rephrase deep sitting. tin of salmon fresh in morning's lampless house xxxxx unheated dreams come and go out xxxxxxxxx table stead for dictionary xxxxx toast. sparrow under horse's hoof xxxxx poof, no trembling weight xxxxxxxxxx friendly melancholy xxx apple pie, apple salve, ginger apple bread xxxx butter sauce over Smokey Mountains xxxxx emerald boat of Zeus and Daphne xxx honey-colored oak. teacher's gruff instruction xxxxx Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum xx clear throat. less outcome. overcome axis 19th c. xxxx Colombian tubas floating moonlit deck xxxxxx shoals of Queen's Islands xxxx El Presidente's stone summer retreat xx coming down out of D.C. Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama xxx Civil War. creek food for fishes. soup kit dishes xxx rebuttal. antidotal predator fattens thinning habit xxxxxxxx movement doesn't stay               Two Worlds   The amber tongue contains the carcass of An ant. Our thoughts crucified with Ruby nails hammered flush against the Expatriate utterances of stolen voices Hemming, hawing, planning, damning Rivers too big to succumb to the pharmacy Somewhere there's a way back, sure But where was that place? It was health Two divided worlds we walked, both of us Who never knew it well, wrote our Last will with hindsight. The future will Not rest. We didn't do a very good job Learning the new each other. Like Heron And Crane: "And to this very day they Go to each other to propose but never get Married." Pour wine over brimming Lip of glass, splotch white table-cloth Pressed with blues, argue out blame Say goodnight in tears                                               May 12, 1998

Michael Rothenberg lives in Pacifica, California. He is a widely-published poet, and the editor and publisher of Big Bridge Press and Big Bridge, a webzine of poetry and everything else. He recently edited Overtime: Selected Poems by Philip Whalen, due out with Viking Penguin in 1999. Jacket hopes to review the book in Issue # 7, April 1999.See Dale Smith's article on Whalen in Jacket # 5.

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