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Friday, December 27, 2013

Poem-A-Day: Manifest Destiny by Cynthia Lowen

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December 27, 2013
Manifest Destiny
by Cynthia Lowen
 
 
The god I'd left behind sent one last email 
before returning to his people. 
 
That summer was sixty-five degrees and fluorescent. 
I was working at a law firm. 
 
The logical mind thinks, 
You'll be paid for your suffering. 
 
Paradise is of this earth 
and it is yours, 
said the copy-machine. 
 
The impenetrable old growth of paper on my desk 
begged to be made 
irrelevant. 
 
When I took off my skirt-suit I felt like my mother, or myself
 
done pretending 
to be my mother. 
 
I stood at the edge 
of a New World. 
 
I stared up the long rocky coast.
 
Whichever way was something to bump against 
I pressed on in that direction. 
 
It was like a sickness. 
It was like the uncontrollable urge 
to eat dirt.
 

  

Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Lowen. Used with permission of the author.

About This Poem 

"I've been exploring how the 19th century concept of manifest destiny--driving the westward expansion across North America in the 1800s--might play out in the context of a modern-day relationship. What frontiers in ourselves, our environments, and each other do we seek out and attempt to dominate? What motivates us to forge towards the unknown?"

--Cynthia Lowen 

Most Recent Book by Lowen



 
(University of Georgia Press, 2013) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem-A-Day
Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.  
 

Cynthia Lowen is a filmmaker and the author of The Cloud That Contained the Lightning 

(University of Georgia Press, 2013). Lowen lives in New York City. 

 


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