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The Brooklyn Rail

MARCH 2021

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MARCH 2021 Issue
Poetry A Tribute to Lewis Warsh

Clouds

for and after Lewis Warsh


Clouds of a certain color become clouds of another, shades of gray knots of sparrows pass across on
their way home to roost


Consolation is always late in coming


You can drown your sorrows in bourbon or burgundy or chocolate milk


You can pick a name out of a hat, you never know whose it might be


At some point everyone you now know could have been someone else, but now you know them as
themselves, and you, for what it's worth, are you


What exceeds memory might haunt you forever, but there's no accounting for what you'll never
forget


A pile of rocks on the concrete steps, the briny sea air of the arcades in Asbury Park


It was like looking through the keyhole of a vacant room


Maybe no one knows the fate of those who've come this way before


Maybe the whole world is filled with jam


There's always a last time and a first time for everything, and it could be anyone knocking at your
door for no reason


Reorganize the books on their shelves as if cleaning the cobwebs from the corners of your mind or
translating desire into a picture postcard someone once sent you


Put it in a frame and hang it on the wall above the piles of dirty laundry and scratched lotto tickets


If nothing else, the gaze of the ancestors will keep you in line


How being 8 was in the ocean, sky with no end overhead


One's name seems important to put at the top of the page


Get your facts straight first before you take another step closer


It might well be possible to know something about something, but how far are you willing to go if it
isn't?


A strip of sand, a shovel and pail, the face of each passing stranger like someone you once knew


I used to know something about something, or so I thought, but now I spend my time learning the
difference between one and the other, in a sleepless stupor, the days getting shorter till the cows
come home


Step out from under the vinyl awning and into the August heat

Contributor

Daniel Owen

Daniel Owen is a poet, translator, and editor.

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The Brooklyn Rail

MARCH 2021

All Issues