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Anodyne

By Virginia Konchan
Poetry•Vol. XXVIII No. 2 (Summer 2015)

There is no cure for passion,
nor poverty, save for shillings
pouring forth from the urns
at the defunct church:
ashes of saints and minions,
unaware that history
is a game in which we are
played like wind instruments
from 14th century France,
broken on the knee of churls,
then painstakingly repaired
by the world’s last luthier.
You play at the dulcimer
to a harem of nymphets
while I walk upon water,
causal reality a makeshift
stage for your plebiscite
resurrection, spectacle
(and spectrality’s) death
leaving us clutching our
ticket stubs, and then each
other, at the carnival’s exit
gate, too astonished to feel.

Virginia Konchan
Virginia Konchan is the author of Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press 2015) and a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift, forthcoming from Noctuary Press. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best New Poets, The Believer, The New Republic, and Verse, her criticism in Boston Review and Jacket2, and her fiction in StoryQuarterly, Joyland, Hobart, PANK, and Requited. She is co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary.

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