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FURTHER READING
Poems by A. Van Jordan
Einstein Defining Special Relativity
From
Old Boy
R&B
The Flash Reverses Time
Poems about Dogs
from The Dogs
by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Deep Lane
by Mark Doty
Flush or Faunus
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
for yam sir: elevated blues
by Abraham Smith
Jogging with Oscar
by Walt McDonald
Lost and Found
by Ron Padgett
Mother Doesn't Want a Dog
by Judith Viorst
Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America
by Ada Limón
Shooting the Dog
by June Jordan
The Marble Faun
by Amy King
Who Is God? So Asked Our Dog
by Dara Wier
Poems About Movies
A Score for Tourist Movies
by Mary Austin Speaker
After the Movie
by Marie Howe
An American in Hollywood
by Frank Bidart
Au Hasard Balthazar
by Stacy Szymaszek
Ave Maria
by Frank O'Hara
Brad Pitt
by Aaron Smith
Chaplinesque
by Hart Crane
Daffy Duck In Hollywood
by John Ashbery
French Movie
by David Lehman
Heroic Simile
by Robert Hass
Homage to Sharon Stone
by Lynn Emanuel
Old Boy
by A. Van Jordan
On the Waterfront
by B. H. Fairchild
To the Film Industry in Crisis
by Frank O'Hara
Trigger Guard
by Joanna Fuhrman
Related Prose
A Brief Guide to Surrealism
La Generacion del 27: Dalí, Buñuel, and Lorca
Related Pages
Poetry in Film, Radio & TV
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Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog)

 
by A. Van Jordan

Because a razor cuts across a frame of film, 
I wince, squinting my eye, 
and because my day needs assembly 
to make sense of the scenes anyway, 
making a story from some pieces of truth, I go 
outside to gather those pieces.
Thousands of moments spooling out 
frames of mistakes in my day. 
As if anyone's to blame, 
as if anyone could interpret the colliding
images, again and again, dragging
my imagination behind me,
I begin assembling. 
I don't know anything, so I seek
directions, following the path 
of ants from your palm, out 
the apartment door to 
a beach. Is this where I'm 
supposed to ask if my hands on you
bend some light around shade? Maybe
I'm not ready for the answer. They say
art imitates what we can sculpt or write 
or just see when we turn ourselves 
inside out. I can't turn my eye away
from the sight of failure. The rain pelts rooftops.
I listen to the song, thinking 
when the sun comes back,
beating down the door
in my head, I'll salvage whatever sits
still long enough for me to render,
before anyone knows what really happened.









Copyright © 2010 by A. Van Jordan. Used by permission of the author.
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