swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

the heart moves
Mike Grinthal

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I Dreamed I Saw Joe C. Last Night Alive As You Or Me

The awesome crow

Shouting oak oak

In one

Is a border

Like any other busy

Being busy touching

Everything and the rain

On the leaves could pass

The Turing test, what

Do I do

To be in the eye of the crow

More beautiful

Yeah

No

The cold is so

That my dying won’t

Fail. I need the help

I’ve repeatedly needed the help

Of winter

The Weldon

Beverage smoke

Stack is going

The bus coughs

The heart moves

A little in the distance

Ruined

Into bloom

The Long-Stringed Instrument

to walk
a mile in the clouds or the
crowds
shoes is
good I would be
good it has a good
sky

it’s crying

out the sun
light bounces
girl-
high dry
engines leap
and low
the papers say
it was never this
silly before
and the empty tree
too says silly

silly blood
in the gutter and the under
side of a thousand leaf
sound
a thousand
hands lifting up and falling
down make
up the ground

now the train

is taking our soft
stone away
to burn and the hole
of rain in the hill
side remains

here

is the wind
sharpened end
of the country
like a dollar
and fifty sings
we take off
our coats
the trash
bird builds
her cold song in the bones
of the ear
we put
on our coats take
off our clothes our low
grade bodies enclose
the song
reach

to the bottom
of the pond to feel
bone there

is a lot
of song we
don’t know

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Michael Grinthal’s poems have appeared in Jubilat, Yes Poetry, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, and other publications. He has worked for 23 years as a community organizer and lawyer in the racial justice and tenants’ rights movements.