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Poems

Book Burning

By Richard Fox ·

_____(with thanks to E. K.)

So much in a face:
the upholstery of
being human.

Everyone cares
enough, but no one
cares enough to

send the very best.
You are an utterly
simple utterance—

best word, best order—
& when I see you—
when I am about to

see you—you are
the set of keys
that is nowhere

I have looked.
How can it be
that I can tolerate

so little? I hurry
home to catacombs
full of suddenness,

& just as suddenly,
there you are,
never stumbling

over English—you
just know better
words in French.

If you could stand by
yourself on the porch,
under the coat hooks,

your face aglow
by mobile phone-

light, I know

that I could live
my life alone
with these bookpiles

raked into larger
piles for the torch.

 

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Richard Fox

Richard Fox has contributed work to many literary journals. “Swagger & Remorse,” his first book of poetry, was published in December, 2007. He was the recipient of a full poetry fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. He holds a BFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia, and lives in Chicago.

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We are Blunderbuss Magazine, a web magazine of arts, culture, and politics, an ordnance of fire and improvisation. What ties together these essays, stories, poems, photographs, comics, and other bits of aesthetic shrapnel is a common attitude of visceral humanism. We aim for earnest noise. We want to splash in the mud of lived experience, to battle for a radical empathy, and to provide a megaphone to howling assertions of human subjectivity.

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