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CHRISTOPHER KONDRICH

Their Papers


The day is a day now that I’ve sat on the branches
above the aging crocodiles, taunted them
with my libidinous song. The secret is in marking time, 

marking the many snaps of the crocodiles’ jaws
and how far their whines travel in this watery muck.
Across the street are lawyers and law clerks,

doctors and assistants to the world’s gray empire
docking overnight. They watch me and fold
their wrinkled clothes, their brows burrowing

past skin and bone and mind. What does it say
on their papers? Am I meeting or exceeding expectations,
or has some variant appeared like a Christ?

I remember this morning like it was yesterday
when the mares were just fauns and the fauns
were just tadpoles wafting on the air

their conniving dreams. I remember sleeping
with you, blue night, in your redundancy,
letting my lids droop their delirious thoughts

like what a plane I’ve been dragging my interminable sun.
I remember the locust as the locust would, awoken
as if in a library of locusts, strange thing once said

vibrating on translucent wings. I remember
picking up a shell without that thing,
which forced men into circles, made them slaves. 

 
 

 
73   The Paris-American

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Christopher Kondrich is the author of Contrapuntal, a New Measure Poetry Prize finalist, which was recently published in the Free Verse Editions poetry series by Parlor Press. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Cimarron Review, Free Verse, Meridian, Seneca Review, Verse Daily and Washington Square. He holds degrees from Fordham University, Columbia University, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver where he is an editor for Denver Quarterly.


   
   Next week's poet:

 Roger Reeves
 
Winner of the 2013 The Paris-American Reading Series Contest
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