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Jonathan Williams

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Jonathan Williams Feature

Ann McGarrell

À mon cher Stodge



Bloodroot and grosbeaks
starry blooms,
shy lipstick lumage
so tame one comes to your hand

There still was snow in the shade
sun behind us
for once also benign
your arm warm through the chambray

extragalactic ginger
big kitty
twitching his tail
(he was trained by a comet)
amber eyes fixed on bird

oh isn’t it time to exult about
something?
— the words and the music
in summer the whippoorwill
never varies his discourse
one string to his bow
pitiless, pitiful
unlike the blackbird
whose riffling all through
the variorum edition
change it, change it
sweet
change it
trills and runs rippling.
write it down write it down

Your hands tamp dark soil
cradling the roots
each one a red lifeline
attendrissements et
évanouissements
— they ought to be Satie titles
but you know they never are.
It was you, it was you.

Ann McGarrell is a poet and translator who lives in Vermont.

 
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