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"There is a lot to discover in Darkly Told. It doesn’t offer immediate answers, nor is it meant to do so, but it will repay careful listening. Hopefully, this chapbook will be successful enough to prompt Alicia Cole to make a few more. Fans are better off for its appearance." - Dead Reckonings No. 18
A Chapbook
George Eklund
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Frontier
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Wet sky, wet life
In the language of the cumulus
The constant breakage of the sky
The circumference of my will
Is small
The wet sails of the light
In my hair
Our long drive connects the elements
The spasm is something holy
Holding us as we cannot hold it
In a bay or a yellow room
Every place may be the strangest place in the world
The child is pulled from the ditch
The cloud pulled from the air
The virus is a terrain
Fastening itself to what breathes.
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Altar
One makes little altars repeatedly
I drop my weight into a chair
At the desk
Amazed by the violins and their particles
And the quiet color of my clothes
Every picture that comes to me
Is a derangement
Place from place
A pellucid cry across the barren Easter
The pointless stroll through the city
The wheels of grief complete
And our hands follow our eyes
Skimming upon the circles of the altars.
Rhodes
On the island of Rhodes I knew so little
Down the sunlit walks above the bay,
On the beach we played chess
With the priests of 1972,
Then took the final cab ride to Lindos,
A perfect place for making love and dying.
When my brother appeared in my dream
I began to know more
Of what we carried to the windmills at night.
Every thought became the beginning
Of a miracle—
Lifting a small block of wood
From the tide of a warm sea,
The gulls swooping in their hungers,
The robust Germans crying Wolfgang, Wolfgang
Frolicking in the surf.
Now I am nearly old in Lindos.
In the left hand a golden glass of warmth,
And in the right, a lengthening rope
That sinks beneath the starry waves
And my brother watching
In the breeze that strikes the windmill blades.
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George Eklund lives and writes in Olive Hill, Ky. He has published widely in contemporary journals and is presently translating leading Mexican poets, as well as publishing in Spanish and English. He has a Bilingual edition of his work forthcoming from Simiente Press.