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This poem is taken from PN Review 108, Volume 22 Number 4, March - April 1996.

Four Poems Jeremy Over


Still Life with Fog, Wardrobe, Funeral and Moon
I don't know what you wanted with the fog anyway;
tonight you are clear
and naked as the lightbulb
that floats above these slippery grass fields
I row my boat across.

Inside the wardrobe light mounts up
then rolls out of the mirrored door,
like logs of silver birch down a waterfall.

I dreamt of swimming to the funeral on an August night, as you cut the air
like the moon cuts the air, like another kind of music,
that wants our bodies more than our clothes do.

The hole in her son's head
is her open mouth full
of teeth, rusty doorhinges
and screeching violins pulling up short
...


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