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Todd Swift was born in Montreal (1966). He is the author
of three collections of poems and an editor of six international poetry anthologies.
He is poetry editor of Nthposition.com and recently guest-edited the section "The
New Canadian Poetry" for New American Writing (2005). He is Oxfam Poet-in-Residence
and a Tutor at London's The Poetry School. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Shop, Poetry London, The Los Angeles Review, Agenda, The Manhattan Review and The London Magazine.
Photo Credit: Derek Adams.
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Map of Love
You are not on my map of love, you said,
And I the cartographer of all things lived,
The device so curled and aged it had faded
Until all we saw was a pipe-smoking whale
On the Risk board, and Ontario, the Urals.
I am fishing for a way to describe equators,
And what equatorial implies. I want you to be
On my map of love. That red pin is my heart,
Which pumps blood like the Red Ocean
And the blue pin beside it indicates eyes
As blue as the enemy’s dashing uniform;
Sweep away those pins and flags, mapless
Heart, and come here to divide these spoils,
On this bed where we surround and fall,
Fighting our way out of consensual poppy fields
Red as battle, as all margins where the dice slip
Off when squabbling over power or Nepal.
The answer is we’re artists, or lovers, after
Night’s cherries in a spring campaign.
Take and eat, your lips suggest holidays
At the beachhead. If I did not hearten you
At my map centre, blame poor reconnaissance.
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At The Window
As the water will take you into the premonition of itself,
The day is an immersion. As some animals rise up at the storm
When it changes the windows, so do some lovers say
They can apprehend the approaching death of an owned world
As if it was a pressure in the air that turns an imagination against
The partner of our living, our impression of an otherness.
She will one day lie and never rise again, the moment between
The instant when the sheet-lightning makes the sky flat
As a god pressing into the spaces between water and ice.
So, she shivers in thought at becoming what isn’t there anymore.
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Brief Ballad of Hiroshima
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
His watch went flat, a thin machine
Time devoured got far too lean
So no-hands point to oblivion
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
The prettiest flower she’d ever seen
The bloom took off all of her skin
Its petals ate the in-between
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
Driving a tram with gloves was thrown
Clear through green fire to lie alone
Dotted and t-crossed with glass blown
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
Her shadow sits, impervious queen
Like calligraphy, a faint teen
Banked up against light’s nothing-been
At eight fifteen, at eight fifteen
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2004-2006 the Dublin Quarterly--to see familiar things with unfamiliar eyes!
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