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Poetry

Audio: Read by the author. 

 

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture,
overtaken by another giddiness
than Donne on his deathbed (testified
to & by Walton)—still, our seeing should be enough—
seeing and listening for
what twilight wants from us.
Our giddiness may be too much, too close to Donne’s searching for angels
in the confines of his room.
The grass, young-green, may cushion us
as we fall
but will not feed us—we are not
made for nourishment that way. Ground owes us nothing—
it is neither slender nor delicate,
will always be more beautiful than we can bloom.
The skin over a girl’s wrist
covers the map of her blood’s climbing and falling
which is hers
as surely as twilight is property
both to & of horizon
which is, I swear, invariably barbed.

 

 


Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Rattle, Margie, Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spillway. She teaches at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas), Alphabet Year, (Wipf & Stock), and The Slow Salute (Lithic Press Chapbook Competition winner). 

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