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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ISN'T IT ROMANTIC, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: The guide book promised birds of paradise Last Line: Whirl me from this place I most wanted to be. Subject(s): Disappointment; Indonesia; Tourists; Dutch East Indies | |||
The guidebook promised birds of paradise, impenetrable jungle, semi-nude tribes, palm-leaf huts wafting their fringed eaves. I've got mosquito netting clotted with dust, large bugs in a cold shower, plenitudes of naked scrotums posing for my camera. If I cancel my appointments with the mummified chief smoked by village elders and the brine pool across the woven-vine bridge, I could spend the day on postcards and pretend I'm talking to my friends surrounded by village ilders in penis gourds and grass skirts who pass round the postcards pointing out the sites of their lives, while loneliness, a drying rawhide noose, strangles my spirit. Mother's hand is lost in Woolworth's for eternity. I long for my personal helicopter to whirl me from this place I most wanted to be. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NO EXEMPTION FOR TOURISTS by KAREN SWENSON ORANGUTAN REHAB by KAREN SWENSON STALKING LEMURS by KAREN SWENSON THE BALINESE WITCH DOCTOR by KAREN SWENSON WEDDING BED IN MANGKUTANA by KAREN SWENSON THAT KIND OF POEM' by KAREN SWENSON |
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