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The Cost of a
Breeze from a Newly Opened Window
by Bill Cowee
For Irina Ratushinskaya
Russian Poet, 1954 -
Imprisoned in 1983 for
writing dissident poetry.
Each word torn from cold; pain-bought;
recited against the stained concrete;
memorized; scratched into soap cakes
with carbon from a burned match;
transferred to small paper scraps;
hidden from a state jailer’s eyes,
the mice, the collaborator’s prying heart,
the thieving wind of December isolation.
Every precious word strung
together in garlands of survival.
Five, eight lines. Yesterday must
have existed. I will find crusts of today’s
language in this indeterminate sentence,
each hour paid out in like currency,
each crack in the wall recorded,
each poem dispatched with laving hands.
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Paradura 4 - Taipei
by Leah Oates
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