Only As the Day Is Long by Dorianne Laux

Only As the Day Is Long by Dorianne Laux

Author:Dorianne Laux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-11-28T00:00:00+00:00


Savages

Those two shelves, down there.

—ADRIENNE RICH

for Matthew, Mike, Michael and Carl

They buy poetry like gang members

buy guns—for aperture, caliber,

heft and defense. They sit on the floor

in the stacks, thumbing through Keats

and Plath, Levine and Olds, four boys

in a bookstore, black glasses, brackish hair,

rumpled shirts from the bin at St. Vincent de Paul.

One slides a warped hardback

from the bottom shelf, the others

scoot over to check the dates,

the yellowed sheaves ride smooth

under their fingers.

One reads a stanza in a whisper,

another turns the page, and their heads

almost touch, temple to temple—toughs

in a huddle, barbarians before a hunt, kids

hiding in an alley while sirens spiral by.

When they finish reading one closes

the musty cover like the door

on Tutankhamen’s tomb. They are savage

for knowledge, for beauty and truth.

They crawl on their knees to find it.



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