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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Rasmussen

His poetry collection, Black Aperture, was selected by Jane Hirshfield as the winner of the 2012 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets...
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	FURTHER READING


		Poems about Buildings
		Architecture Moraine by Joanna Fuhrman

		Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson

		Broadway by Mark Doty

		Cape Coast Castle by Yusef Komunyakaa

		Glass House by Heather McHugh

		Notes on a Visit to Le Tuc D'Audoubert by Clayton Eshleman

		Steps by Grace Schulman

		The Starlings by Jesper Svenbro

		Water Picture by May Swenson

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Skyscraper

by Matt Rasmussen

A sword thrust
into the city.

From inside
the café, the letters

on the window
look like a new

language. It’s this
simple: There is

nothing within us
like what we are

inside this window.
Colossal seppuku,

you are the sky
before the sky.

About this poem:

"I began this poem when I lived in Boston, where our apartment had a view of the John Hancock Tower. The poem was once two separate, longer poems, one about the Hancock and one about the café, now trimmed down and mixed together. Growing up in a small town, tall buildings have always amazed me and I think the poem has its origins in my childish awe of skyscrapers. I think the poem began with a game I am constantly playing inside my head: imagine something as something else."

—Matt Rasmussen

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