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This poem is taken from PN Review 8, Volume 5 Number 4, July - September 1979.

The Waiting Room Peter Scupham

We lie where she lay, feel the bed conform
To a shape not ours, a flesh grown thin as air,
And open her eyes again to the ebb of day;
Hear the gulls for her, find her conversation
In the crook of a stain, the shift of an awkward board.

Here she is close to hand, the stuff of her life
Pasted into the cracks of a room where pictures
Lower their oils to the dusk, dark upon dark,
...


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