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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.
Being without boundary, the perfect day
That I cannot hold, that I want to hold
Is a field and we who do not yet live
In such a calm place run around selling
Phantoms of the dangerously obsessed
Like the notion of stars, being far-fetched.
Even a more earthly concept, the field
In our misguided hands gets a value
Such as one dollar more will give you this
Power to conceive such a place beyond
Smokestacks, city coroner, unfixed road
Beauty salon of face masks or Bok Choy
Bagged at the door on a simple metal table
With rows of meat in the background
People lining up but not for the deal
They want to touch those vegetables
The way you, filmmaker, want to touch film
Or you, runner, want the road to crackle
And push up into the ball of your foot
Be muddy as you fall down and slippery
As you are flung up by the momentum
Of the hill, open as you touch the knoll
On Dayquil, just about now kicking in.
Margaret Monaghan's poems have appeared in The Iowa Review and Typo. She lives in New York City.
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