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1 " Years ago you followed someonehere, in love with breathkissing the nape of your neck,back when it was easy to beat least two places at once. "
― Yusef Komunyakaa , The Chameleon Couch
2 " A goddess of dawnscooted under a zing of barbed wireto witness your birth. "
3 " Go & tell your drinking buddies& psychoanalyst your neighborhas risen from the ashes. I wonderif I should tell you about the love lettershidden behind the doorjamb. This housestill stands among my lavender flowers.Tell your inheritors to think of mewhen they smile up at the sky. "
4 " I'm turning you into a girlchasing a butterfly, a she-wolfon a hilltop, & then back into a woman. "
5 " The place was a funeral pyre for the youngwho died before knowing the thirst of manor woman. Furies with snakes in their hairwept. Tantalus ate pears & sipped winein a dream, as the eyes of a vulturepoised over Tityus' liver. "
6 " I glimpsed Alice in Wonderland.Her voice smelled like an orange,though I'd never peeled an orange.I knocked on the walls, in a circle. "
7 " The older I getthe quicker Christmas comes,but if I had to give up the heavenlytaste of Guinness dark, I couldn'tlive another goddamn day. Darling,you can chisel that into my headstone. "
8 " She lives between the Vale of Kashmir & nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky. The voice speaks of an atlas & a mask, a map of Punjab, an ugly scar from college days on her abdomen, the unsaid credo, but I still can't make the voice say, Look, I'm sorry. I've been dead for a long time. "
9 " See her? I was born to readher mind. I can get so close to hermy breath is cool on her skin,& she'll be seven blocks awaywhen a cry leaps into her throat& she knows I untied the money belthidden under her velvet jacket. "