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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.
here is a rock
or a line through a name
here is glass
or a curtain of dust
here is July
an altered object
kindling here
the letter X
is amplified sound
or a page on a screen
a speaker recorded
a message here
here is tobacco
the exchange of signs
promises goods
perhaps causing pain
here is a word we cannot
and here is the furnace
where we feel rich
the landfall the plant
here is July
our meat
here is laughter
the match the lighter
the fluid an army
the blink of an eye
still looking for noon
in other people’s tents
here is smoke
what we meant by alms
here is the bonfire
here it’s redder than
Barbara Claire Freeman is a poet and author of The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction. She teaches in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
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