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SOUTH AMERICA
  

he is trying to write down a book he wrote years ago in his head
an empty candlestick on the windowsill        each day
of his life he wakes in paris to the sound of vivaldi in summer
and finds the space programme fascinating since he still doesn't know
how radio works        as in the progress of art the aim is finally
to make rules the next generation can break more cleverly         this
morning he has a letter from his father saying "i have set my face
as a flint against a washbasin in the lavatory. it seems to me
almost too absurd and sybaritic."
       how they still don't know
where power lies or how to effect change
he clings to a child's book called "all my things" which says:
ball (a picture of a ball) drum (a picture of a drum) book (a picture of a book)

all one evening he draws on his left arm with felt-tipped pens
an intricate pattern
        feels how the pain does give protection
and in the morning finds faint repetitions on the sheets, the inside
of his thigh, his forehead
       reaching this point
he sees that he has written pain for paint
       and it works better

--Tom Raworth

(published in Lion Lion, London: Trigram Press,
1970)

Pulsar
by Gene Frumkin

Poem For My 60th Birthday
by Dick Allen

Now That I Know What Feverfew Looks Like
by Elaine Equi

South America
by Tom Raworth

Words of Wisdom
by Mark Pawlak

The Art of Poetry
by Bobby Byrd

Some Anthropology
by Michael Heller

The Reality Executive
by James V. Cervantes

Those Sunday Afternoons
by Charles O. Hartman

The News from Mars
by Wendy Battin


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The Blue Moon Review/Blue Penny Quarterly, ISSN 1079-042x
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