A D R I A N   L U R S S E N   &   S U S A N   T I C H Y
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HE DOES NOT KNOW HE IS A BIRD

 

('He Does Not Know He Is a Bird' is composed entirely
of language from Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun
and Rachel Back's Led by Language: The Poetry and Poetics
of Susan Howe.)

#1

 

You hate the sudden onset
of winter light. Singing

in a private room,
you recognize the first signal

of an imminent peace: everything
is irritating, naked, hellish;

a pronounced curse of independence
amid snows, winds, blizzards.

You believe in spirits
rooting you to the ground. Order

is a feeling of anxiety. Trying
to save yourself, you dream

of palm wine and beer. You are
being covered, finally,

with loud voices.

 

n e x t

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Time and again I wish I could lift to sound, to break out. Half stutter/half lisp, the crooked history of a continent floating on the open page: these sounds inventing terms. Such a document is not free.

 

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