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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
I’ve just seen inside a crystal.
You appeared to me as an old man, clear
as television. Teach me, I said.
Then chaos then cloudy. Then
the Santa Ana winds contained. Unburden
us, I said. The windchime swayed
with telenova rank & file, a blur
in the crag. You’ll already know what
appeared before us in that spectral cloud
The staged & unstaged
soul singers before your comeback, the lit
& unlit blues singers before you, then
the chain & the field, then fire.
The ankle-belled psychic said
this is his celebration then a chorus
of cottonwoods sang
the songs my mother sang as she
drove with a hand on my knee, the chants
of my teachers & the sound of bread
rising & the ankle-belled psychic
said this is for your hunger.
Dawn Marie Knopf’s poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Bomb, and Verse.
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