It happens like this: Majestically,the pigeons spill downa few steps awayon a hot summer’s dayon Broadwayjostling one anotherAll the dust and the messI’ve becomeovertakenby unevennessWithin the daysBetween the hoursI’m bewildered byall the dollars I’ve spenton a life out of balancewhen there’s all thiscosmic consciousnesswithin a kissand the 1 AMthat haunts the handin my pocketsearching for the keyholeAll those mistakes agoLike everyone else,I feed themA few cents of breadBut it’s the thirstno one thinks aboutWhen I look outYOU are alwaysThe landscape within
Giving Up Reason
Pam Rehm
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“Giving Up Reason” from Inner Verses by Pam Rehm.
Published by Wave Books in October 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Pam Rehm.
Used with permission of the author and Wave Books.
All rights reserved.
Pam Rehm is the author of Time Will Show (Shearsman Books, 2018), The Larger Nature (Flood Editions, 2011), Small Works (Flood Editions, 2005), Gone to Earth (Flood Editions,2001), To Give It Up (Sun & Moon Press, 1994), and The Garment in which No One Had Slept (Burning Deck Press, 1993). She lives in Manhattan.
From the author of To Give it Up (Sun and Moon) which was selected by Barbara Guest for the National Poetry Series, comes Pam Rehm’s Inner Verses, a book of deep gravitas that belies its slim, portable volume.
Comprising lyric poems that are attentive to “the underneath mind / growing more and more / quieted,” Inner Verses is a collection that understands the ways in which time is mutable and brief. Here, we experience a genuine devotion for both birdsong and breath, and the intimacies of thought connecting the two. In this way and with exacting tenderness, Pam Rehm creates poems that relish solitude and yet are generous enough to carry us as company.
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