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Oct/Nov 1998 Poetry

In Reply to Gil

by Deborah Tobola


 

In Reply to Gil

who asks me how many times I'm going to reinvent myself:
I see the dots and lines of my past, untamed rivers of light,
relief map of the real world. But I must venture into the blue heart
of the book, where I put glitter on the bad red cow,
sacrifice my ideas about love
for conversations with women on the road.

In a brilliant local fever, Coyote calls me from
the imagination world, pulls me from sleep with his radio voice.
Say no to visible archaeologists, the trickster tells me.
The last taboo is falling: elephants weep, cedars talk,
random divinity dances, burners on fragrant snow.

I'm on the road, the red road to Barstow,
crying widow's tears. There's light above everything,
wild glitter glittering in the real world. In the stormy house
of lush skin, Zoe wants most objects of adoration now.
The last taboo is falling. The snow is falling.

 

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