“I earned these lines; don’t you dare
erase one of them!”—Anna Magnani,
upon learning that a publicity photo
of her had been airbrushed.
In the morning
I look at you
as you sleep.
You are so you:
the fresh sweet student
I first saw
fifty years ago
in the college cafe.
And then I go
to the mirror
and wonder
whose sagging
wrinkled face
is that?
All those lines
must have
sneaked in
over night:
a cosmic
cosmetic joke.
Wait: there’s one
near the corner
of the eye—
I had one just like that
years ago;
I couldn’t help it:
blamed it on laughing.
Then you come into the
bathroom behind me
look over my shoulder
breathe onto my neck.
You I recognize.
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odd
No hydro line went into the old farmhouse
a sister and two brothers lived alone
they farmed by horsepower and they never painted
the hard frame house the colour of dried bones.
Year by year they farmed into their nineties
and stories grew about how they were tight
a visitor who came to gather silence
could wait all day and even into night.
The old windmill they used to pump their water
the wagon that they hauled to gather hay
the windows in the night so dark and silent
and all the strange things people wont to say
had no effect on them they went to bed
and godless lived ’til they were doubtless dead.
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