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A Small Anatomy of Feeling

That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound

Rebounding,
                           rounding the fecund earth

Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
                                                 is a mighty absence to understand

(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)

Dun is the color of submission

Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface—

Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple—

Apple of the eye, amour of town and street, apple of the cheek
Eaten with a dab of honey for a sweet year

Ear to who am I in the suddenly-arriving what-comes-next
Next to being, next to delivery, next to undergone
Gone parenthetical but now revived as her eye
Spies the sudden trespass of his unexpected welcome—

Succumbing, coming unto him in full sun this morning

Mourning what she need not beguile or lie beside

—Anna Rabinowitz

Anna Rabinowitz's most recent book of poetry is The Wanton Sublime. Others include Darkling, which has been adapted into a multimedia theater work by American Opera Projects, and At the Site of Inside Out.

Originally published in the March/April 2006 issue of Boston Review


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