Norman Dubie Poems

The birches stand in their beggar's row:
Each poor tree
Has had its wrists nearly
Torn from the clear sleeves of bone,
...

You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights

He stumbled through Petersburg forming
...

for Allen


Here, on the farthest point of the peninsula
...

Mistress Adrienne, I have been given a bed with a pink dresser
In the hothouse
Joining the Concord Public Library: the walls and roof are
...

Very pragmatic closets of falling water,
bath and sewer, complex
dwellers eating black bread,
...

In the cold heavy rain, through
its poor lens,
a woman
...

The General's men sit at the door. Her eyes
Are fat with belladonna. She's naked
Except for the small painted turtles
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Steam banks chugging out the brick autoclave
under the laundry room, screams rising up chutes
while the sergeant's leg is sawed off above the long sock.
...

The island, you mustn't say, had only rocks and scrub pine;
Was on a blue, bright day like a blemish in this landscape.
And Charlotte who is frail and the youngest of us collects
...

The vase was made of clay
With spines of straw
For strength. The sunbaked vase
...