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Tryst Feature Poet John Sweet |
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Tryst Feature Poet John Sweet |
| the body dissected, the cancer laid bare (later) |
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each story is true the woman's body is found naked and wrapped in a dirty blanket on some railroad tracks eighty miles north of here her left hand writes a message on a bathroom wall and she's saved at a truck stop in a state i've visited someone is caught or not my wife calls from her sister's home and mentions me in her list of fears do you notice that the story is over? we've moved on to less certain things sit down she says on a different day in another season i'm pregnant and i think of everything i have and of everything i've lost until it all gets confused i think of diane looking for the king of spain and i have never claimed to have profound insight never claimed to have divine wisdom or the soul of a poet i understand the alchemy of loss into anger i understand fear tried for years to transform it into something pure was there when the dress was found in a dumpster and later that night i was drunk on the hood of a car in a field of tall grass there is no hidden meaning in the deaths of strangers the house burns or the car slides into oncoming traffic or the man grows tired of the sound of begging pulls the truck into a rest area and leaves the engine running thinks the thing through without emotion then does it ŠJohn Sweet 2002 Featured Poetry |