FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF ANNE VERVEINE, VIYour purchase of this book helps support independent publishing
You are dead, therefore I write to you.
I am dead, therefore I write to you.
Did we ever kiss? The shadow airplaneswooped down to smack the tarmac silently.
That crash didn't crash. The kiss
did but dissipatedin air like phantom smoke
rising from my shadow chimney inching
its way all afternoon acrossthe neighbors' slanted roof—
heat gusts escaping up the flue and printing themselves
as visible ghosts trailingoff to a chilly Empyrean.
February gleams on the roof slates.
As if the fire were real. As ifthe heart pumped real blood.
r o s a n n a w a r r e n
b o s t o n , m a s s a c h u s e t t s
This poem by Rosanna Warren was composed as "exemplary" of the work of an imagined French poet, Anne Verveine, who was contrived for and included in the recent anthology, The Imaginary Poets, edited by Alan Michael Parker and published by Tupelo Press.translating a poem into EnglishThe Imaginary Poets will be reviewed by Margin in detail later this spring, but we strongly recommend you pick up this wonderful anthology now, which sought to find writers game for the challenge of:
offering a biography of the poet
composing a short essay to which the poem, the poem and the corpus are consideredwhile making all of it up, without once indicating they have done so.
and risk-taking literature. Seriously. Buy it now!
