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The Voice of Water by Michael T. Young

April 1, 2012 Contributed By: Michael T. Young

It sounds like grape leaves shaking.
It cushions like thick grass underfoot.
Its currents spread beyond the range of mountains

which is why sometimes people mistake it
for the distant trickle of the sun setting.
The error depends on which way they’re walking,

and if the wind is blowing from the north or south.
It licks my fingers when I wave and only by its tongue
can I tell if the person I’m greeting is a stranger

or some distant uncle.  My neighbor
grins from his porch, cigarette in hand,
comforted by one of its many dialects.

When it whispers, it whispers with
the same heaping hush of salt
pouring from an uncapped shaker.

Because of its excesses it remembers.
Even after I’ve closed the book
it keeps reciting the lines.

Return to table of contents for Issue 5 Spring 2012

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: April 1, 2012

Further Reading

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Rupture, Pulse, Revise: What We Can Learn From Arthur Russell and Emily Dickinson’s Poetics of Refusal
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In the spring of 1981, New Wave group the Necessaries piled into their tour van and set out from New York City toward Washington D.C. to play a gig with R.E.M. At the time, they were signed to the Warner Brothers subsidiary Sire Records, had just finished their first studio album, and were well-received by […]

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Kent Johnson’s call for “negative” reviews led me to this modest proposal: 1.  The reviewer cannot be a friend, teacher, student, pet-sitter, neighbor, relative, former lover, or partner of the author of the book reviewed.  A simple contract could easily stipulate this. 2.  If someone close to the author is the reviewer (to offer some […]

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