But His Mind Climbed Up and More

by Jeffrey Burghauser (July 2018)

Andre Salmon and Montmartre, Jules Pascin, 1921

But His Mind Climbed Up

“But his mind climbed up, high from

His heart. He paid hard for that.”[1]

Not mind, not heart, not their sum,

When his mind climbed up, high from

His heart; it was he, the plum,

Punishment was aiméd at.

“But his mind climbed up, high from

His heart. He paid hard for that.”

No Smoking

The war against smoking is the war

Against all unauthorized dolor.

Ecce Homo

Substantial, a knotted shrub; a flowered skeleton—

Hummingbirds in anxious multitude between the boughs

Complete the outline, silently, making it a Man.

[1] Anlezark, Daniel, ed. Old Testament Narratives. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. p. 287.

 

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Jeffrey Burghauser is an English teacher in Columbus, OH. He was educated at SUNY-Buffalo, the University of Leeds, and currently studies the five-string banjo with a focus on pre-WWII picking styles. A former artist-in-residence at the Arad Arts Project (Israel), his poems have previously appeared (or are forthcoming) in Appalachian Journal, Lehrhaus, New English Review, and Iceview (Iceland).

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