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Poems

September 2006

City album: a wet afternoon

by Brad Leithauser

I. Dorm Room

Theirs is that special condition of plenty
  available only to those with nothing
    on or between them. It’s as if they’d been
  out in the downpour, bodies wet as
    that—but they’ve stayed in all day. Again
  he studies her nape, fingertip-tests her hip.
He thinks her very young. Eighteen. He’s twenty.

II. Basement Lab

The entomologist drops into a pool of light to peer
  at the magnified maxillae of a rare beetle
    while something lackluster raps the dusty pane
  above her head, a passing fluster of drops
    hardly worth speaking of as rain;
  she bagged this firebrand, Pyrophorus ignitus,
on a slope that catches two hundred inches a year.

III. Rectory Study

A working dr ...

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Brad Leithauser
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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 25 September 2006, on page 30

Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

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