Jeremy Osner
Butchers
Poetry which may perhaps
defend my shadow
some time, in days to come
some time when I'm just a name
not the man
with empty pockets, wandering
and working
in the butchers of the old
and of the new continent.
—Roberto Bolaño
My dreams, my not-so-easy dreams,
my dreams with antecedent
in some unknown trauma
some nightmare long gone by
I drop them and they fall
there's no external reference
to hold them up, to slow them down
no parachute,
to where? and when
will they stop, will they find some
resting place
Dreams fall of the old
and of the new continent,
they fall without end;
dreams of friendship
macho friendship: rough homo-erotic self-
suffiency, published privacy. And in the
butchers of North America
may no dreams work
but shadows.
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