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04.10.12
Four Poems
Bodied Sleep

scent that never leaves 
flesh 
is flesh

errors
in the shape of life

in piercing 
ices       the rain
falls

ceiling

things
   replaced

we cannot mend

our shells in night








Amaranth

a dream
hung out the night
soft
off beds
perpending

sleep, you don’t come
without relations

dissolve

*

howled
autos passing
nearby highway
tract
houses rickety
bellow

wooded this area

*

stench in autumn’s 
lingering

road-
   kills    skunk

   this unpleasant misplacement
smelts
between seasons
androgynous

as paranormal that comes
                                       over

trees with their leaves still
can’t hold so
much snow weighs


            suspended



in-
spacious reality

intern gray
the evening
mute the night
blank

I feed deafness

*

light the night 
diffuse

echo on edge



drink
where is the shore
   he fears
and the devil

*

we take what we want

on the crescent
   the breast
an impatient machine

it grows quicker

*

fret and not
    nothing will be lost, this
        winning bread
      its token for us

the sun unravels

      days and more

divided
   for the unmeasured


             a memory
        branches bare

awaiting winter’s old
                          approaches 








The Night Had Two

moved to commune—came 
mingled us

among morals
chased
olives in pool gin

rendezvous & speech of
smoke, a falling

sense
like water taste

drowned 
that world

found in public
toilet
seat, a pubic hair








The World That Blew Us

effaced sun
has dyed

through fog
and frost

you know
the repose

while it lasts
feel low
for fear of it
wait

the dying
leaves evacuate
flocks of feathers
dome the gray sky
awaken

early winter’s
sharpened winds
chilling

our words
blow us

storms, when you stay up there
in nameless clouds 

Ngoc Doan lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she is a student of poetry at UMass-Amherst. This is her first published work.