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Poet's Choice

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She hovered in the dust-light, railed

as porch lamps flickered and the power failed,

but not in her. The boom-and-tingle of the storm

was half by her imagined. Hanging on the hard

wings of her apron, always in her sway,

I listened as the green ears all were torn,

her face by lightening cracked and clawed,

her laughter tumbling, beaked and cawed.

In these poems, just as in conversation, the symbolic nature of language expresses mixed emotions, fears and desires, mighty or subtle, the unending stream of connotation.

(Katrina Roberts's poem can be found in her book "The Quick: Poems." Univ. of Washington. Copyright 2005 by the Univ. of Washington Press. Jay Parini's poem can be found in his book "The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems." George Braziller. Copyright 2005 by Jay Parini.)

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