The old roads are not of the body.
The fish swarm the surface.
Plants find their own suns.
Inside each reed a glass lining
we’d plant in the wading pool
for the museum to police itself.
If you know the right people
you can photograph the moment
bodies of water come together.
We hold things with partial fists
shoes on the windowsill,
slow safari of furniture.
A bruise, a tomato, a running from.
Weren’t you under the bar,
a smile on the counter?
Weren’t you a car full of balloons?
The brain is a long walk.
It’s morning. Or afternoon
after a shower. Flowers moor
in large oval spaces. Later
the elevator cage, accordion
door. There’s enormous darkness
outside the apartment tonight.
I need to start cooking potatoes.
The plants neatly balconies.
The chefs and waitstaff open
and then close the restaurants
across the way. Smoke breaks
together. From this far.
The sidewalk tables are ruins
that we walk through, eager.
It has always been like this.
A sear with a varnish of butter
and fresh pepper. A swallow
of wine. A swallow.
To Remain Lost
Feature Date
- October 27, 2018
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Copyright © 2018 by Daniel Coudriet
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Daniel Coudriet lives with his wife and son in Richmond, Virginia, and in Carcarañá, Argentina. He is the author of Say Sand (Carnegie Mellon) and a chapbook, Parade (Blue Hour Press). His translation of Argentinean poet Lila Zemborain’s Rasgado was awarded an NEA Fellowship, and his poems and translations have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, jubilat, Oversound, Prelude, Transom, and elsewhere.

21-Aug-18
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Bard College
Editor: Bradford Morrow
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