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Ripping a Charles Simic Poem Out of the New Yorker

from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems by Joshua Michael Stewart

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RIPPING A CHARLES SIMIC POEM OUT OF THE NEW YORKER


The one about the insomniac fortune-teller huffing down snowy streets, professing premonitions to the headless mannequins in the tombstone-storefronts. I’ve been roaming the bookstore for hours. The saleslady in a hand-knit sweater (a blinking red bulb of reindeer nose over her right breast) eyes me from the register, sweeping her tongue over her teeth—a primitive gesture that says, “I know what you’re up to, Buster.”

Subscription cards trail behind me into the self-help section as surely as bloody footprints lead to the executioner’s favorite hotdog stand in Simic’s poem. The doll in the fourth stanza has sold her hard-luck story about how mice built a nest in her head, and a sliver of moonlight reveals a snout emerging from one of her eye sockets.

I want to save that doll, so I stealthily pull that page away from the others like digging a tunnel through a dungeon wall. The magazine drops like the last brick holding back sunlight. I tuck the poem into my jacket and turn toward the electronic doors. The saleslady cries out like a guard from a tower—the red light on her chest flashing gunfire. The doors slide open to the woman standing in fresh snow. She grabs my hand. Eager to read.

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from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems, released February 26, 2023

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Joshua Michael Stewart Massachusetts

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician living in Western Massachusetts.

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