Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
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NORMAN DUBIE

Again

I’d left Paris for the beaches
in Spain. I’d sold
my dead father’s farm
and, in shame,
bought it back again
at a great loss . . .  then
a plough found
a shelf of bismuth
and I sold just the north pasture
for big serial profits
and I am ashamed again:
the huge white bones of my father’s
favorite cow exposed
one late September morning!

It’s always been potatoes and bread
or millions of francs on speculation.
I am not stupid. I’m not dead.
But the bones of an old cow assemble
repeatedly now in a dream
where my naked lame father
sits in a tub of boiling milk
and screams at me
first my name and then his name
which is the same

name. The crimes of the verb to be
pushing a hard rain in general
across the city and its suburbs. . . .  end


   Again
   At the Tomb of Naiads
   Butter
   The Hat Called Sky:
   The Quotations of Bone
   The Quotations of Meat
   Sif Mons & the Messenger Birth Star

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