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Last Dance
I was setting aside a room in my mind to retire
with books and pens, memories and photographs,
table, chairs, sofa, bathroom attached, kitchenette
to boil water, make coffee, a self-sufficient pad
where I would receive visits, from the most dear,
children, friends, but I felt sadness still, solitude,
silence from across the water, wondering why
correspondence stopped, the post office closed,
but I cannot blame letter carriers or planes. Words
fly these days at the speed of light from Northern
tip to Southern floes. There is no excuse but
the oldest in the book, the heart exposed
day-in day-out will explode. The woman has
chosen the bread she will butter, flowers
to tend, friends to see as she grows older
and I must learn to walk away, to say I have
had my dance with the Muse and not regret
a minute or second or look back.
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Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty poetry books, including the newly released Blue Window (translated by Jennifer Rathbun), The Migrant States, Coconuts on Mars, The Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War, and The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the Allucionistas site; writes a blog; co-directs Poets & Writers Studio International; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento. He also hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube. Indran Amirthanayagam has received fellowships in poetry from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Macdowell Colony. He is a 2021 Emergent Seed grant winner.
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Fernando Botero (1932–), Couple Dancing [unsigned; possibly an imitation of his work]