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Upraised Arms

    There was a man who slept on his back in the sand with his arms raised to the sky. My arms are the twin towers, he thought, attempting to resist a dream. My feet are Babylon. My stomach is where snipers hide. There was a man who came to rescue the people. Oh really, said the people. Let us greet you with arms full of flowers. With arms. There was a man who lived in a tower, most disturbed by bees, by corrosive mold and dusty rust. By loving couples, strangers exchanging portraits in the dark, immune to peeling paint, curtains sailing about in the wind mimicking fog. We are embedded in the fog, said one stranger to another. It was dawn over Baghdad, but neither stranger believed in light.

from The ChairFind it in the library

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Published in Poems Richard Garcia

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