At a book of details
Of all the moments when knowledge is acquired.
A sort of expanded balloon
Sighs and says, “We are what came before.”
“The storm in the window of the mind,”
The sleeping sister says while she’s walking around
Wonderland watching
A cat touching down and talking.
Not a car in sight. A cemetery seen from the air.
All the obelisks you could ever ask for.
Source: Poetry (October 2009).
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This poem originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Poetry magazine
Mary Jo Bang was born in 1946 in Missouri and grew up in Cool Valley, outside of St. Louis. She originally studied sociology, earning both her BA and MA in the subject from Northwestern University. She earned a BA in photography from the Polytechnic of Central London, and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Apology for Want (1997), which received the . . .
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