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Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Poem-A-Day: The Forecast by Michael Dumanis

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The Forecast
by Michael Dumanis
 
I carry myself out into the rainswept blur.
I lift my pleasant voice over the coming flood.
I have nothing to do that I'm going to do.
I keep meaning to purchase a dog. I keep waiting

to email you back. When I see you again will
I know who you are? Once I wove you a mask
of rattan and hair. Once I carved you a mask
of painted wood. I brushed my wooden leg

against your wooden leg. We had learned to imitate
each other's breath. When I see you again will
you know who I am? Will you place your words back
into my open mouth? Once I held you for years

in the stones of my eyes. You were an ineluctable act of God.
Into the drainage ditch we hurled our toys.

Copyright © 2013 by Michael Dumanis. Used with permission of the author.
About this Poem:
 
"My first memory--I must have been two years old, at most--dropping a toy pail from my baby carriage into a deep cement drainage ditch and watching my grandmother walk frantically around the ditch, not knowing how to get the pail out. The masks in question hang in the Menil Collection in Houston as part of a group of objects once owned by Surrealist painters."

Michael Dumanis 
Poetry by Dumanis

My Soviet Union

 

Poem-A-Day launched in 2006 and features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

 

Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.
April 2, 2013

 

Michael Dumanis is the author of My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007). With Cate Marvin, he is the co-editor of Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006). He is a professor of literature at Bennington College.

 

Photo credit: Mary Biddinger

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