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The Waiting

By Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Insistence of Beauty”

—————

I waited for you calmly, with infinite patience.

I waited for you hungrily, just short of desperate.

When you came, I knew that desperate was attractive.

I was calm, no one wants the kind of calm I was.

It tried your patience, it made you hungry for a man

who was hungry. I am that man, I said,

but I said it calmly. My body was an ache, a silence.

It could not affirm how long it had waited for you.

It could not claw or insist or extend its hands.

It was just a stupid body, closed up and voracious. 

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The Answers

By Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Insistence of Beauty”

—————

Why did you leave me?

We had grown tired together. Don’t you remember?

We’d grown tired together, we’re going through the motions.

Why did you leave me?

I don’t know, really. There was comfort in that tiredness.

There was love.

Why did you leave me?

You began to correct my embellishments in public.

You wouldn’t let me tell my stories.

Why did you leave me?

She is…I don’t wish to be

any more cruel than I’ve been.

You son-of-a-bitch.

Why did you leave me?

I was already gone.

I just brought my body with me.

Why did you leave me?

You found out and I found I couldn’t give her up.

I was as shocked as you were.

Why didn’t you lie to me?

I was already lying to you. It was hard work.

All of it suddenly felt like hard work.

Why did you leave me?

I wanted to try monogamy again.

I wanted the freedom to be monotonous.

You fucker. You fucking son-of-a-bitch.

Why did you leave me?

I wanted you both. I thought I could be faithful

to each of you. You shouldn’t have made me choose.

Don’t you know what betrayal is?

I never thought of it as betrayal. More like one pleasure

of mine you should never have known.

You are really quite an awful man.

Why did you leave me?

It was time to leave.

The hour of leaving had come.

Why did you leave me?

It would take too long to explain. Please

don’t ask me to explain.

Will you not explain it to me?

No, I will not explain it to you. I’ll say anything

rather than explain it to you. Even things that sound true.

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“It’s easy (I know it) for anything to occur

when men feel one way, act another.”

Excerpt from “Grudges” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Insistence of Beauty”

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“Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.”

- William H. Thackeray

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“…On that dark Juarez night,

every step of your troubled descent

was toward me. I was waiting

in the future for such a woman.”

Excerpt from “Juarez” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Insistence of Beauty” and “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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“I was unfaithful to you last week.

…

At that moment (you understand)

we had to hug, but that’s all we did.

It hardly matters. We were in each other’s

sanctums, among the keepsakes,

we’d gone where most sex cannot go.”

Excerpt from “The Stories” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Insistence of Beauty”

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“Because I was slow with girls

and didn’t understand

they might like to be touched,

my girlfriend took my hand

and placed it on her breast.

We were sixteen. I just

left it there

as if I were memorizing,

which in fact I was.

It was all research and dream,

some fabulous connection

between my hand and her breathing,

then I was breathing like that too.

…

I’m thinking of the power of loveliness

to sadden.

…

And I love the corporeal body itself,

designed to fail,

and the mind, the helpless mind,

so often impelled to think about it.”

Excerpts from “Not the Occult” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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“Often sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

then returns to its dark

source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road

it’s traveled

to come so far, to taste so good.”

Excerpt from “Sweetness” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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“Thus, for years, I thought

all arguments were silent

and this is why silence

is what I arm myself with

and silence is what I hate.”

Excerpt from “What Goes On” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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“The house had double locks

but in the dark a wrong person

would understand: the windows

were made of glass:

…

The work we did left some time

for the work we loved.

…

I knew after many hurts

how to hold back

what could hurt me,

how to become hollow, absurd.

Passing churches, I remembered

the old repetitions,

the faked novenas,

but what did I feel, really,

after removing disguise after disguise,

then adding others,

could I know what I felt?

At night, the shining

steeple across the lake

was a nuisance or a beacon.

…

Years ago, when the angels

our parents insisted on

could not longer fly

and our bodies took them in,

it seemed we’d solved by cancellation

how to live on our own.”

Excerpts from “Local Time” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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THOSE OF US WHO THINK WE KNOW

Those or us who think we know

the same secrets

are silent together most of the time,

for us there is eloquence

in desire, and for a while

when in love and exhausted

it’s enough to nod like shy horses

and come together

in a quiet ceremony of tongues.

It’s in disappointment we look for words

to convince us

the spaces between stars are nothing

to worry about,

it’s when those secrets burst

in that emptiness between our hearts

and the lumps in our throats.

And the words we find

are always insufficient, like love,

though they are often lovely

and all we have.

By Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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“Could I tell her the Bible

is a great book certain people use

to make you feel bad?”

Excerpt from “At The Smithville Methodist Church” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World.”

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“Make a fire.

If the Devil sits down, offering companionship,

tell him you’ve always admired

his magnificent, false moves.

Then recite the list

of what you’ve learned to do without.

It is stronger than prayer.”

“Traveling (From “Sympathetic Magic”)” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World”

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“A hesitation hints at an attempt to be honest, suggests

a difficulty is present. A good sentence needs

a clause or two, interruptions, set off by commas,

evidence of a slowing down, a rethinking.”

Excerpt from “Propositions” by Stephen Dunn, featured in “The Not Yet Fallen World.”

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“When you inside your life it’s a bet for your heirs, which you win by dying…I’ve tried to live my life so that living would be its own annuity, in its own time. A bet in the dark, the beneficiaries always in doubt.”

Excerpt from “Insurance” by Stephen Dunn. Featured in “Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs”