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Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr

Beggar’s Song

Here’s a seed. Food
for a week. Cow skull
in the pasture; back room
where the brain was:
spacious hut for me.
 
Small then, and smaller.
My desire’s to stay alive
and be no larger
than a sliver
lodged in my own heart.
 
And if the heart’s a rock
I’ll whack it with this tin
cup and eat the sparks,
always screaming, always
screaming for more.

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Other works by Gregory Orr...
Gathering the Bones Together

The deer carcass hangs from a raft… Wrapped in blankets, a boy keeps w… from a pile of loose hay. Then he… and dreams about a death that is c… Inside him, there are small bones
Trauma (Storm)

Hunkered down, nerve-numb, in the carnal hut, the cave of self, while outside a storm rages.
Departure

To the trees, leaving Came naturally— A green extension Of their being. But for Adam and Eve
Two Lines from the Brothers Grimm

Now we must get up quickly, dress ourselves, and run away. Because it surrounds us, because they are coming with wolves on lea… because I stood just now at the wi…
To Long

How beautiful they were, Adam thought— These beasts and birds; These tall grasses And flowering trees.
To Noun

Nouns were a giant Confining— Adam felt the sounds He made Build bars around
To Name

God wanted labels That would stick To fur or bark or leaf. Hadn’t he given Adam A tongue?
To Notice

In Eden, Adam Had been so busy Making up smug Nouns of dominion, He hadn’t watched
Self-Portrait at Twenty

I stood inside myself like a dead tree or a tower. I pulled the rope of braided hair and high above me
The Pond

Snapping turtles in the pond eat b… and frogs. They do us no harm when… But early this spring two Canada… lingered, then built a nest. What… heard of, our neighbor feared: gos…
To Love

Grieving came from leaving Eden But leaving Eden was not grief— It was a lesson in lessening— How things, diminishing, Become more precious.
Then

My parents and the parents of others were pillars of meat the sky’s blue roof rested on. Around them grew flowers with stalks so thin they bent
To Say/To Save

Eve sensed this Was something Words could do In a fallen world: Move a thing’s
To Choose

God planned a static planet, With plants that bore No offspring—as if Acts had no consequence. But Eve was there to change
The River

I felt both pleasure and a shiver as we undressed on the slippery ba… and then plunged into the wild riv… I waded in; she entered as a diver… Watching her pale flanks slice the…



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