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FURTHER READING
Poems by Jennifer K. Sweeney
Fragments for the End of the Year
How to Uproot a Tree
In Flight
Related Poems
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by Kristi Maxwell
Directions for Lines that will Remain Unfinished
by Sarah Messer
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In the Waiting Room
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It Happens Like This
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She Is Overheard Singing
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so you want to be a writer?
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How to Make a Game of Waiting

 
by Jennifer K. Sweeney

This is a capsized game
and there is no display of aces at the end.
Buy a rare and expensive plant that never blooms.
Rearrange your books by the color of the spines.
Bury all your keys that don’t unlock anything.
These are not rules but merely suggestions
of what has worked for others.
For instance, the man who painted landscapes
on his daughter’s sheet music.
Put a big rock on your desk.
Do not name the rock.
Take the numbers off the clock and mail them
to your creditors.
Stitch the hours onto a kite.
Every night, ask until you can hear what replies.






Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer K. Sweeney. Reprinted from How to Live on Bread and Music, with the permission of Perugia Press, www.perugiapress.com, Florence, Massachusetts.
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