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Poem Fragments

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2009 :: Issue 4/Spring :: Poem Fragments

The Devil’s Almanac

Eric Nelson

Snow like happiness
Shapes everything.
Then the melt,
The man’s head
Caving in on itself.

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Beneath the heaviest stone
A worm can live.
But who wants to live
Like a worm?

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Only someone who still has it
Can say
Hope is a curse.

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What a strange piercing—
Hundreds of small birds,
Each shaped like an arrow
Flying in the shape of an arrow.

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There’s no future in old age
But immortality
Never goes out of style.

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History is written by the winners,
Literature by the losers.

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Wind careens like a drunk,
Slamming doors one minute,
Shushing itself the next.

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Reading Pound:
Some can.
Some cantos.

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Happy memories
Are the saddest.

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All night not rain but stars
Pour down. Red giants,
White dwarfs fill the garden,
The sky drained of its wishes.

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Animals know what to do
With the dead—
Roll in them.

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God’s humor:
What a 127 mile-per-hour wind
Does to a 55 mile-per-hour sign.

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Love begins
Where heaven ends.

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Like white robes
Egrets hang against the
Blackened wind, the
Enormous wall of wailing sky.
Very small white robes.

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Love’s syllogism:
Her nipples are hard.
His cock is hard.
Love is hard.

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Clouds sail into morning
Like galleons.
By noon a few ripped flags
Blow away.

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It’s not the going home
That’s hard.
It’s the wanting to.

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Before the wheel,
The basket.
Before the need to go
The urge to hold.

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On a turd baked
White in the sun,
A butterfly rests.

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It’s solitude if you like it.
Loneliness if you don’t.

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Why oppose opposites?
A hammer pulls as well as drives.
Only what is buried grows.

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The frog’s lament:
Sometimes everything
Seems so hopless.

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The trees grow bald.
Leaves skitter
On the street like teeth.

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God’s humor:
Lightning, then thunder.
The attack, then the warning.

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Believe ghosts
Before angels.
Ghosts speak
From experience.

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Darkness to wake to.
Darkness all day.
Between rains, clouds
Shaggy as wolves
Slip through the trees.
Muddy prints appear
On the floor.

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Prayerless, the wounded
Cat heals itself
With its own rough tongue.

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