Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2015  v14n1
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back C.L. O’DELL

He Thinks in Squares and Melted Grass
on “The Gate” by Hans Hofmann

I have built that before something perfect
a flower cut into paper and then while folding back
into a flower dies. I have built that before a mirror
blunted by night and the teeth that live inside it.
You said a newborn screams until it’s souled.
I have built that before a baby and a bent arm
to carry all their roots and gears and whatever part
that makes them make me think I deserve a shadow,
somehow needing their needing me more somehow
the horizon a thin gold hinge and how we’re in
this neither opened nor closed entry.
  end  


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