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There’s something faintly off about how the tram tracks stop
midsentence without leaving a trace.
Something about shadows unfurling
from seemingly nowhere and shifting a bit
and the cobblestone all glossy from an afternoon rain
and still the greyness persists and the trucks rumbling.
Everything else remains a bit queasy or almost unfinished,
including the stuffy drawing room study
with the cut flowers and blackouts,
with fingers leafing a book and the moonlight shrouded in darkness.
Gerard Malanga is the author of No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000. For the past seven years, he has been at work on a new series of poems, titled Who's there?.
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