SUMMER 2001

 





Gil Allen

REALITY'S FOURTH OF JULY

It's Independence Day
so these words have no reference
even though rockets
are making more than a verbal
display, wheeling in
their mauve and green phrases
punctuated briskly
by the bright and BOOM
forever sentencing the VFW to
Expletives Deleted!

But that past isn't here

either. And isn't it nifty
to know tomorrow is
another day, a poem
that cannot be spoken out
of existence but
lingers duly--its hours
conscripted for the country
of life, with flourishes
more brash and beautiful than those
I have not described?

Gil Allen received a BA, MFA and PhD from Cornell University, where he was a Ford Foundation fellow. Since 1977 he has lived in South Carolina and taught at Furman University. His books of poems are IN EVERYTHING (Lotus, 1982), SECOND CHANCES (Orchises, 1992), and COMMANDMENTS AT ELEVEN (Orchises, 1994). His work has recently appeared in Cortland Review, Image, The Georgia Review, Pembroke Magazine, Quarterly West, and The Southern Review.

 

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