Word

by

Jim Barnes

---

A

voice

one feels

poetry or not

poetry. Little it

matters which. No one

word matters more than it

takes to voice it. Your voice

takes wind and rolls it rough and

easy to reality, a thing, a word, the

final name of something that brings truth

naked into the world: there's a birth

of rhythm, rhyme, in language you

hold between your teeth. Into

each utterance some forms

of poetry fly, storms

you live by, flak

to split Jack

or Jane's

brain

From Paris. Copyright 1997 by Jim Barnes.
Used with the permission of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.

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