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She buys a torn and faded map
All the continents are misshapen
The rivers smudged.Her faith is
inexhaustible. So here I am,
the bridge she will never cross.

The cataratic mapmaker rubbing his
eyes knowing only one route.

I stand on the other side
watch her put on a mask
so we will know exactly

how she feels, watch
her turn away
with map in hand

watch her
as she gets
smaller
and smaller.

I am on the otherside,
sitting on a chair,
in an empty room

in an abandoned house,
the windows have been boarded shut.

With my finger I erase
the ring of water
left behind by her glass.

It is true that I loved

her.  I am gaunt
and my ribs are showing.


copyright c.a. leibow 2007
Published in Rat Fink Review
I did conspire to love you.

2. The moon was happy with us.

3. Baudrillard’s concept of “Object Fetishism” is more relevant than Marx’s.

4. Thank you.

5. Trees are closer to heaven than the angels. (I know, you already know that, but I like the line).

6. You have the most beautiful sorrowful eyes.

7. The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. (RILKE 1912)

8. Locomotives fall in love going in opposite directions.

9. Certain earthquakes do not like themselves.

10. The more one contemplates the less one lives; the more one accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less one understands ones’ own existence and ones’ own desires. (Debord 1967)

11. I did plot to love you.

12. The black crow on the wire is not me.

13. Umbrellas can be opened inside. (Only black; counter intuitive, I know).

14. Your touch; my body remembers softly.

15. I did love you.

16. Clocks sometimes stop for no reason.

17. Even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that contains a desire or its reverse, a fear…Everything conceals something else.
(CALVINO 1972)

18 Sometimes letters sent, never arrive.

19. Only you ever made me blush.

20. In the end, everything is just a dream.

21. This poem will maximize your interval times.

22. Love is ambiguous, at best a “Contamination”, from the Latin *** tangere. “leaving a tactile print.”

23. I will let you go.

24. I will publish this poem

25. I will always love you.


Sincerely Mr. Leibow

— The End —