Joel Brouwer

Summer 2023 | Poetry

Sonnet Found in a Borrowed Book

A shadow so rudely diminished the new sculpture

in the boudoir we felt compelled to drag our asses

back out on the hustings and affirm a few values.

We call it our forfeit pageant. The horses in it

surprise me every time, because horses never lie.

Personally, I’m happy it’s harder than ever

for the village harbingers to turn any heads.

Days are deaths, you know that. Our ancestors

plunked us in a bucket, and lately the babies

harmonize like forsaken cicadas, but mercy me.

When ye olde tricks no longer pay the rent

we learn to live with damp kindling and sincerity.

You melt bronze, I crack granite. Then again

I love when you muss me up against an evening.

Joel Brouwer is the author of four books of poems: Exactly What Happened, Centuries, And So, and Off Message. He teaches at the University of Alabama.

Joel recommends Robert Zaretsky’s book, The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas and Ernst Lubitsch’s film, The Shop Around the Corner.

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