Again — Blackbird Archive

← v10n1, Spring 2011

It’s always been potatoes and bread

or millions of francs on speculation.

I am not stupid. I’m not dead.

But the bones of an old cow assemble

repeatedly now in a dream

where my naked lame father

sits in a tub of boiling milk

and screams at me

first my name and then his name

which is the same

name. The crimes of the verb to be

pushing a hard rain in general

across the city and its suburbs. . . .

family memory grief

Norman Dubie

Norman Dubie’s newest collection of poems, Robert Schumann is Mad Again, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2019. His work, which includes books of poetry and aphorisms such as Lumen de Lumine (Paper Press Books, 2017), The Quotations of Bone (Copper Canyon Press, 2015), The Volcano (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), The Insomniac Liar of Topo (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), has been translated into over thirty languages. Dubie has won the 2016 Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize from POETRY , and the PEN Center USA Award for Best Poetry Collection in 2002. He has received fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photo by Matt Valentine