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shattered sonnets love cards
and other off and back handed importunities
shattered sonnets
love cards and other off and
back handed importunities
olena kalytiak davis
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they thought it queer i didn't rise i thought a lie would be queerer
e.d.
table of dis- mal- contents
dedication
sweet reader, flanneled and tulled
the sonnets
small quilled poem with no taste for spring
may be you are like me: scared and awake
in the clear long after
march licked me with all his brown lack
shattered sonnet #3
dear abiah
a small number
the lais of lost long days
june twenty seven eight nine nineteen sixty seventy ninety six seven eight
wow
six apologies, lord
the unbosoming
of yawl and ketch
in one of my
dis-spelt
quain
to dante and cavalcanti and you
she (as sonnet)
letters to various personages
the true repertory of the wrack and redemption of sir olena kalytiak davis
dear beardtongue
letter home
poem convincing you to leave your wife
keep some stuff for yourself
to love
other importunities
a new philosophy of composition or how to ignore the non-reasoning creature capable of speeech perched outside your bathroom window
you art a scholar horatio, speak to it
moorings far faster
despite ominous forebodings of sin sickness and death
il penseroso and l'allegro: inverted and dubbed
poem for my #*th birthday
notes toward the ablation of the soul
sign offs
a dry death
sign off #1
sign off #2
another sign off
aloft in a tangerine cloud
the o antiphons
o great slacker
this is the kind of poem i'm done writing, or, a small pang in spring
the garden of love
stripped from the waist up, love
if you are asked
forgoodisthelifeendingfaithandfitfully
dedication
sweet reader, flanneled and hilled
Reader unmov'd and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc'd
and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.
I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank
season, counting—I sleep and I sleep. I sleep,
Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf
as a leaf. Reader: Why don't you turn
pale? and, Why don't you tremble? Jaded, staid
Reader, You—who can read this and not even
flinch. Bare-faced, flint-hearted, recoilless
Reader, dare you—Rare Reader, listen
and be convinced: Soon, Reader,
soon you will leave me, for an italian mistress:
for her dark hair, and her moon-lit
teeth. For her leopardi and her cavalcanti,
for her lips and clavicles; for what you want
to eat, eat, eat. Art-lover, rector, docent!
Do I smile? I, too, once had a brash artless