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Unread 03-20-2009, 02:58 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Athens, Greece
Posts: 3,205
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And another favorite contemporary syllabic poem of mine, Rhina Espaillat's sinuous "Current" in 11-syllable lines:

Current

Coiled to spring, newly unplugged from the homely
percolator, you watch me with tense nostril-
eyes that rivet like fangs, your small motionless
head malignant and useful, angry god that
reached for me once in childhood through a hairpin
probing the wall’s secrets, sudden and smoother
than sex or whisky, a licking all over
by fire, a rod of ice in the marrow.
And afterward I hid night after night, but
ah, you found me in dreams, flicking your quick tongue
lewdly from the safety of familiar things;
you crouch in my walls; you ripple your braid of
muscle among dark leaves in the mind’s garden.
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