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October 2004  |  Jacket 26  Contents  |  Homepage  |  Catalog  |  Search  |


Kent Johnson

“Even though he’s known as a Language poet, I want to write like Norman Fischer”

“Even though he’s known as a Language poet, I want to write like Norman Fischer,” he said to me, out of nowhere, leaving.


For sesshin, “but I probably never will,” the mountain.


Towering in the picture behind the boy’s head, his little brother’s head reaches to his shoulder, trees.


And trees, and a river, far away, disappearing into the younger one.


His hand on his brother’s shoulder, he has to reach up a long ways.


To put it there, the sky is blue, though fading now from sun against the picture, there are.


No clouds, but far mountains, and trees, and sky, they are alive, they love each other, they are.


Contented, it is spring, one now is dead, the other sits in sesshin, “who is.


Alive and who is dead?” the words come from far away, his back.


Is straight as a dead pine on a mountain, still standing in the clear.


Cut, it reaches, towering into the sky, “who’s next?” shouts the monk, it is spring.




October 2004  |  Jacket 26  Contents  |  Homepage  |  Catalog  |  Search  |
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