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this is a pileated wooden ball
dropped in a wooden bowl
this is a woodchip guitarpick
lost down the sound hole

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plumber has him
his own ideas
about beauty
eyes worked alert
like they like to
livetrap baby wrens
pickled quail
nestled in beanbags
of beaver liver
fishes his keys out
flash and violet flashes
now who just
took a pic of who

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and the slaughter semis
idle in the kearney lot
while truckers run in
best they can
chickens in quicker rain
for another silo
of hummingbird juice
extra whipcream please
up the street at
the drivethru
coffee and tea

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purple yellow red orange green
petal shade names
for each there is an organ
in the human bringin in
the sheaves over whose
grass hill blue tent stasis
sails this looser icer showout moon
dead word higher leaf aloof
pluckt right outta diction

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owl swell as felt on a card table
from 1932
up and down
soft and hard
as last year’s wasp nest
has to sing
a tossed lambwool baseball
and i never tire
of the wingtips
round as fingertips
no to feather fire fume
having a major cow no not now

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yes such that rabbit
drawing the towel
of the eye slowly
around the body
opened up over
umbrella or newspaper
war or the funnies
must bounce the ball of the mind
on each anarchic peak
of a run on
straight for the mud
puddle stone

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i have an idea i want to go everywhere
i have an idea ideas are not merlins bringing
the skillets of their shadows down i
have an idea ideas are field mice
peaced with bummed seed and faint
first light tin grey treebark comma
good night all you apples could’ve been
i was a longer winter good night

Abraham Smith was raised in northern Wisconsin and resides in Ogden, Utah, where he teaches poetry at Weber State University and improvises song-poems with the Snarlin’ Yarns. This poem is part of his latest book-length manuscript Surgencies.
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