Eric Torgersen Poems

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1.
New Leaves

In the kitchen window
the coleus I cut down to stumps
to make cuttings for friends
is spreading new leaves to the sun.
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2.
The Story Of White Man Leading Viet Cong Patrol

The Story of White Man Leading Viet Cong Patrol
-AP Dispatch, Des Moines Register, August 4, 1968

The slain enemy resembled
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3.
Re: That

That was no language that was your life.
That was a punning linguist.
That was the headline Author Gets Off.
That was an offer of amnesty and amnesia,
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4.
Open Stage Poetry Reading

After the one that sings, and after the one
that can make up poems of a kind right on the spot;
after a girl who didn't . . . walk very well,
took five minutes to get from her seat to the stage
...

5.
My Blindness

Once I woke up in the dark and thought I was blind. There was no light at all. There's always some light.

Blind, I was calm in that perfect dark. Friends would come, and I'd tell them what they had to do. It would be all right.
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6.
Case Studies: I

You thrust into the coffin
where your young wife lay cold
and even more hauntingly beautiful
for the tragic manner of her death
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7.
Locked

Children tattooed, pierced and studded, dreadlocked;
parents panicked, indecisive, deadlocked.

Mother to daughter: live as you must, if you must;
for just a bit longer, keep the door to your bed locked.
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8.
When They Draw Us

When they draw us, the children,
as great beaming sun-faces
balanced on sticks, waving sticks,
can it be that they see us so soon
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9.
The Piper

No, he never led them far away,
willing as they were to follow
and not to go back.
The mountain never opened
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10.
The Lone Ranger Rides Off

Thank God he's gone,
on his horse
of all colors-
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