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This poem is taken from PN Review 90, Volume 19 Number 4, March - April 1993.

Two Poems Neil Powell

MOVING HOUSE

'This is a dream,' I tell myself, waking,
'And what it says isn't real.' But there's my house,
Its stairs and its ramshackle rooms overflowing
With people from the street, and that blonde girl
   you knew.

I've really no idea what they're all doing there,
This whole vacant parade of the unwanted world.
Now we've found our own space, so I no longer care:
Released from your wrapping, you are my present.

Yet what subtle adjustments we've made since we
   began
To know each other last winter: I've even grown to
   love
Those dead flattened vowels you claim as Australian.
Holding you now, I could tear you apart like bread.

My head on your musky chest, I must have slept,
Waking to find the house still crowded, its furniture
...


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