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Everything is a meer spunge,
my business: interval, common

little patch
with the romantic name.

Hast thou entered into the treasures
of the snow, the treasures of the hail?

You start talking
like that, I might

ease you in.
Like almonds whose milk blurs

the smashed polygons of a glittering hide.

You ain’t by yourself
neither.

It is the glory of God
to conceal a thing.

I like to peel it off
in long strips.

A prime example of penitential food.

I wouldn’t even care I’d
do her and all seven of her personalities.

It has stricken me
—a Snow White phase—

and I was not sick.

They have beaten me
and I did not feel it.

They have closed the gate
to gods and fakers.

This poem is from Daniel Tiffany‘s fourth collection of poetry, Neptune Park, released this month by Omnidawn. His three previous collections of poetry are Puppet Wardrobe (Parlor Press 2006), The Dandelion Clock (Tinfish Books 2010), andPrivado (Action Books 2010). He has also published translations of texts by Sophocles and the Italian poet Cesare Pavese, as well as Georges Bataille’s pornographic tale, Madame Edwarda, and books on literary theory. His fifth work of criticism,My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch, will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. He is a recipient of the Chicago Review Poetry Prize and the Berlin Prize of 2012, awarded by the American Academy.
*Photo courtesy of Héctor de Pereda.
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