Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Charles Bernstein


AN AFFIRMATION


I am not I

when called to account-

plaster over, dumbly benched

the corrosive ardency

of blinkered identification.

To affirm nothing, a veil 

of asymptotic bent,

prattling over-

tunes in the striated 

ecstacy of an turned-

around spade. Sprain parkway

gulls its titular

horizon, & my growling

Zebra knows me just

enough to tip

her hat.

© 1997



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