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Clever March Dance

By Tristan Tzara
Poetry•Vol. XXX No. 2 (Summer 2017)

ice breaks lamp leaks and your lungs are square they are a yellow trumpet the stars’ teeth
postage-stamp of flower-shirted-jesus the pocket-watch turn turn you turn those black
stones
in my icy soul I am alone and I know I am alone and dance lord you know how I love green and
thinness and because I love it big wheels grind down gold and here is the one who always
freezes
step on my toes empty your eyes and bite the
star that I set between your teeth
whistle
prince violin whistle bird-white

Tristan Tzara was a Romanian poet and one of the founders of Dadaism. His Dada manifestos were key to the development and dissemination of the movement. Tzara's tumultuous relation with Andre Breton led to Breton breaking from Dadaism and founding Surrealism. Tzara would later write the long poem "Approximate Man" and assist the French Resistance during World War II. Andrew S. Nicholson is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the author of A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire (Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University 2015). His poetry has appeared in magazines and journals including Colorado Review, Bitter Oleander, and Eleven Eleven and has been anthologized in New Poetry from the Midwest 2014 (New American Press).

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