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CARL PHILLIPS

Since You Ask

Through the air, over water,
five crows are taking down a falcon –

it's like a dream:

            dream-falcon
                                                 deposition
                      mercy-falcon

the wings folding and unfolding like
any childhood looked at

then looked away from, across it

warriors spurring on forever their still half-wild horses,
rivers to ford, still,
slaughter ahead – bullet, arrow – horses

included, if you must,
then swiftly, despite whatever in a horse might count

as innocence, X, but glittering, let it

            split the fair steed's forehead clean in two.



9     The Paris-American

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Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books, including Silverchest, forthcoming in 2013, and Double Shadow (2011), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has also translated Sophocles's Philoctetes and has written a book of  prose, Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry. Other honors include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Academy ofAmerican Poets, to which he was named a Chancellor in 2006. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

  
   Next week's poet:

 Joseph Fasano
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