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The American Poetry Review

Two Poems

All in Red

The sun is drifting away again, behind clouds
that look most like the hairs well sprung

from my temples. I can’t see the sun setting,
but I know it is. So many things are like this:

merely a sensation of truth. I can’t see my body
changing, but I know it already is. Just as I know

there’s a woman at the benches on Bainbridge
Street, though I am not there with her.

She is thumbing through a stack of photos
of her son, printed on copy paper,

kept quarter-folded in her purse. I know
that her son is adored, though I sense

he doesis a fragile and delicate thing. I refuse all

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