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This poem is taken from PN Review 149, Volume 29 Number 3, January - February 2003.

Three Poems Lucien Jenkins

John Donne in Hollywood

The joy of rage, the sudden leap
of spring and children in the garden.
You track the simile frame by frame
as the dog chases the cat through the garden
the cat chases the mouse and your wit
goes haring off in search of new forms.
Word coursing: a safe world of danger
where anything can become anything.
This is alchemy and the law is put
out at night with the cat. So what
is impossible? To fall
over and not stand up, to break
and not be mended, to go mad,
to be in love, in pain, to pray.
To be alive. The cartoon can't draw this.
Endlessly the shattered regroup,
...


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