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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


HIGH HOLY DAYS by JANE MILLER

First Line: I AM THE PRINCESS OF LIFE GONE OUT
Last Line: WE GOT BOTH HARBORS
Subject(s): ABSENCE; LOVE - LOSS OF; SEPARATION; ISOLATION;

I am the Princess of Life Gone Out
I am the sunless parallel in the vertical

Two spirits forming out of the quiet by day
& the native by night
Most demure, Jane
most meditative of you

to broadcast the velvet of an inner thigh
of the nymph in the summer sky
& for the last secret effect
before it goes out over the airwaves

tell me something equally heavy
which leads the dancers to the hanging
of their red-hot tights to the line
setting the sun

Now is the time, whichever you like better, friend,
all inferior beautiful thing

Her skin is whiter than milk her tan is darker than beer
in the shadow of special dispensation
like for a Jew the absolute
saints sighing & fairies crying
all over their invisible members

Random cradle starting up like a life in me
Don't be surprised if I laugh the shore says to the water
every time you win in the end
but live where
since we didn't know of any place to stay
to take in an even smaller part of everything

a case of a sacred object
not making its escape toward evening
a cow
implanted in the video arcade of a Midwest mall

a small head nobody will believe I did it
Saturday night after the movie let out
seized like a biker
with hazel eyes like headlamps turned yellow

If it's such a deep secret no one will verify it

Goethe has to describe the beautiful
folds of Christ's garment
raised off the ground exposing one knee
before we get a sense of internal space

automatic freaks like auto freaks through a wheatfield

In my heart I have a memory of you
but not the brain to decipher it

god the wind as windless as the world behind a computer screen

Out of the air-conditioned inferno in the broad street
high school girls bleach holes in the darkness of Clinton Avenue
I stand like Ozymandias on Quaaludes
missing whom I miss

once in reverence & once in despair I dreamt
we got both harbors



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