Alison Luterman Poems

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
...

I could be the waitress
in the airport restaurant
full of tired cigarette smoke and unseeing tourists.
I could turn into the never-noticed landscape
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Try to love everything that gets in your way:
the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane
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So many so small go on day and night
under your feet you barely notice.

A big bang sounds like someone in the upstairs apartment
knocking over their refrigerator, and you ask,
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My love plays piano and his foot hovers above the pedal.
Sustain, they call it when the note floats
like a basketball player suspended in air,
or a question whose purpose is to remain unanswered.
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Consider the pigeons of the city,
how in their filthy swoop and dive they fatten
on dusty Dorito crumbs;
consider their evolution
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The afternoon had a flu-like quality, gray and threatening to burst into tears at any moment, but I held it together like a grown-up, taught my classes, smiled at the children. I was in love with one little boy who couldn't write, not one idea in his
...