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MEGHAN PRIVITELLO

Re-animate


This life was supposed to be

a staircase         a suitcase

a sooner than later            way to die

But there is a city full of lamps

that are too sad          to light:

is to say I am hiding something greater

than a ten dollar bill      behind my face

I am worth less         than the current

the way it rips a wedding dress       

into the anemone of the people

Around my mouth          the sky trends

tries to paint me          a ghastly blue

until the neighborhood buries me

next to an arcade          of flu swept starlings

Loneliness is a lampshade            trying to be

a robe      it thinks there is a yellow body

to diffuse       But the body is not a bomb-

shell        It is a century of failures        war toys & surges

The body is         supposed to be living

it is a casual suit            a cassette

a noun that never married         its fast-forward

its godly red verb


 
  
136 The Paris-American

Picture
Meghan Privitello's first book, A New Language for Falling out of Love, is forthcoming from YesYes Books (Fall 2014). Poems have appeared or will appear in Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Sixth Finch, Pinwheel, Drunken Boat, Boston Review and elsewhere. She currently serves as co-editor of The New Megaphone. You can follow her on twitter @meghanpriv.




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