[Omitted from the Text]
Black shadow hangs over the dust of my beloved;
So I turned myself into dust, but the shadow left me behind.
—J.W. v. Goethe
translated from the German by Joshua Weiner
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INTIMACY
It was arduous and strange
like trying to walk
a mattress through
a corn maze.
But we never
didn’t have
a place
to rest.
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IN THE OUTSKIRTS
Ravens eat the eggs of songbirds;
a silence at night chokes the lotus.
Oh my lady, twice today I’ve kissed your lips
with a bead of semen on my fingertip.
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JOSHUA WEINER is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish (all from Chicago). His Berlin Notebook was funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship and published in 2016 by Los Angeles Review of Books. New poetry and prose, recently and soon, in Molly Bloom, Matter, American Poetry Review, Provincetown Arts, and Chicago Review, among others. He lives in Washington D.C.
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Read more work by Joshua Weiner in B O D Y:
Essays and Reviews:
Berlin Alexanderplatz, April 2016
Transit by Anna Seghers
Gift and Gear: The Work of Thomas McGrath
Uljana Wolf & Christian Hawkey’s Sonne from Ort
Poems:
Poem in the March 2015 Issue
Poem in the October 2012 Issue
Two poems in the September 2012 Issue
And elsewhwere:
Poem in Molly Bloom
Poem in Matter
Translation of Ernst Jandl in Poetry