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This poem is taken from PN Review 245, Volume 45 Number 3, January - February 2019.

My Blue Period
and other poems
Rebecca Watts
Finds

I could say: dragon’s tooth,
philosopher’s stone,
gold dust

but I’m clearing out the car on trade-in day

so I say: black toggle off your duffle coat,
pebble (I forget where from),
thin covering of sand.

But, but… says a tape I’ve never listened to,
which predates me and is labelled in your
earnest hand: BLUEPRINTS / NIGHT.



Interns

Five days out of seven we go to the Work Room. We work on Projects.
We turn on the computers cheerfully and tap the keys. We exchange stories
but not about our Projects, to which we’ve been specially, individually assigned. Now and then
He descends and, rather than gliding from the building to unspecified, important places,
enters the Work Room like a blast of liquid nitrogen only talking. We tap cryogenically
...


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