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Bruce Beasley

Sibboleth

. . . for several years my Lexicon was my only companion
—Emily Dickinson

cry out your shibboleth
into your homeland strangeness
—Paul Celan

Word-ridden, have
you been that way:
-riddled,
I mean, morphemes

begging to be multibegotten

at once, and, for once, always
alphabet-encysted:

are you like me like that, relieved
from sense, shot

through with it, shot through it, into it,

alpha, beta, letter-
scatter, where’s
their omega, their
z, zed?
Razed,

lexis-blazed, into-syllables-
blasted,
stressed

in

till the literal
disintegrates, no-more
unisonal, all-turned
to one bullethole, exit-
wound:
Say shibboleth, dis-
embarrassed
of your disfluence, of
assimilable sibilance.
Riddance,

riddance, have you said your
goodbyes, passage-rite-
gone-through to the sibylline,
say sibboleth, have you
been bidden like that, like me, toward some

other
and forbidden speech-way, taken at
your word,
taken by your word,
vernacular-riven, ridden,
I mean, on
the haunch of your words?

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Vol. 43, No. 2

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Rosalie Moffett

Writer’s Notebook—Hysterosalpingography

Rosalie Moffett

Many of the poems I’ve been writing lately are trying to figure out how to think about the future, how to reasonably hope, and what we must be resigned to. How can you imagine the future when the present is so slippery, so ready to dissolve?

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