Bin Ramke Poems

Colligated points, dust, ultimately a cloud, as in
an orographic cloud in Colorado cringing against
a horizon. Boundaried vision and vapor conspire
...

The heron resolves itself from the gray lake the water
conversely the woman dissolves in sex, her own
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The Pontalba Apartments in the View-Master
and the cardboard cathedral as if trapped in the dream
twenty years early, the whole a furious search
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I was young once, at least, if not beautiful.
And what is beauty anyway? The light off snow
is pretty. I was young once, as young as any.
After all, she thought, to know the edge
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Pei designed the building with views,
smooth masonry, and the mountains aligned
for a photo opportunity; inside are files
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Heraldry and all its lovely language;
I chose my time there learning
elsewhere, where else than land,
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So much I thought was only personal, like poetry,
like caring nothing for Caillebotte the man,
like arriving in Chicago by bus one gray morning
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"Who are you to tell us how to live or why,
et cetera?" No Man, of course, and not so tall
as is the current fashion, nor smart enough
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Sonnet 29
Is there a sound? There is a forest.
What is the world? The word is wilderness.
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Any morning anyone—the sky and the sound
of birds, the air a river no bird can fly
through twice—an uneasy joke: the air's
...