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ANTHONY CIRILO

Awe


I confess, I touched myself
in clear view of God. I knelt

in the tall grass. I knelt
beneath a bramble of stars

in the strange weather
of the universe and felt the musk

grazed field pressing itself
to my mouth like a wound. My mouth

to the dirt. My kingdom. What does
it matter if nothing here is real?

The wind still tosses the laughing
sunflowers. The loons will rise off

the rippling lake like an idea.
In the crushed yellow

of this dream, I am busy
inventing shame.

Forgive me. How nothing can lift
its bright stain.


 
171  The Paris-American

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Anthony Cirilo is an MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark where he teaches composition. His poems and reviews have appeared in The Volta, The Oxford Review, and Montclair State University's Creative Research Center. Currently, he is co-directing the documentary Poetry of Witness, including original interviews with acclaimed poets from around the world.



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