Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Twenty-five
Spring 2011
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A flower fingerprints in pollen
Henry Shifrin

A flower fingerprints in pollen:
shadows my shoulders amethyst. A hand
of sorts patting hello when I walk

with sidewalk, a breeze
and the warm breath of magnolias

as intimates -- the way waves
of television befriend my sleep,
wash over my curled shore of knees.

My purpled shoulders clarify
me among passing bodies and swaying

trees; I'm a sentence pruned of modifiers,
like a hatless man who only uses
the coat rack and perhaps forgets
his coat. And lately I've conversed

with glass. The movement of my lips
is the sweep of hawk wings. Perhaps only
in my thoughts, but like the strike

of lightning, pollen also has the feel
of a god's touch, that the void

isn't so empty -- it's a vase on the dinner table
our thoughts will fill.

About Henry Shifrin

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