The Right To Be Past
A newborn adjective squealsin mixed light at dawnunder blankets, branches, and leaveshustling in the larger windthat pans out beyond languageas the shot tracks the horizonall the way to the coast litteredwith expired money sucked out by a wavetwirling uselessly to the undersea caveof a dictionary's ghosthaunting meanings from wordsto craft for itself an empty sentencelong enough to hold its nightly reenactmentsof the scandal that banished itto such lonely incoherence.
Feature Date
- October 12, 2023
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“The Right To Be Past” from IMPERSONAL RAINBOW & THE BISEXUAL PURGE: by Paul Killebrew.
Published by Canarium Books in October 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Paul Killebrew.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Paul Killebrew's new book contains two distinct and brilliant collections: IMPERSONAL RAINBOW gathers short meditations on life and its many sensations; THE BISEXUAL PURGE is a long poem which discusses "legal developments, cases, and arguments about both sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination" while following events both personal and public during 2017.
”Paul Killebrew’s THE BISEXUAL PURGE is a unique and wonderful poem: a documentary work that keeps twisting back on itself, a poem of identity that admits the puniness and fragility of the author’s own political individuality, an Ashberyish linguistic haze that clears itself to examine honestly the ‘promiscuity’ of language in the service of power.” - Jay Aquinas Thompson in Poetry Northwest
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