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

the other side of the world
Pansy Maurer-Alvarez

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from RETINA (vii)

A woman touches her lips impulsively and there she finds
the insides of names
of demeaning relationships in flux

She remains faithful and spatial for a long time
in a kind of greenly moon-like flush
where she contemplates the other members

of society lined up on the beetle path and she becomes
apprehensive of bone-like homes without water
of snakes hunting sideways

And when she sees the lies of her equals
she stands in sharp global lighting
and cries out a bright red necklace across her throat

from RETINA (xviii)

this is a conversation that continues on a different plane

unattested

pithy

persistent

filling all your chambers of desire

from RETINA (ixx)

it’s overcast and likely raining behind that landscape, on the other side of it, on the other
side of the world, opposite us where we sit, sustaining a perfectly ordinary conversation.
a trickling overflow of many years of repeating and having to repeat words, the same
words. even alone, the repetition of thoughts, almost audible within this tremendous
desire to prolong conversation. now we meet where thick green clusters of sound fill the
spaciousness between the stanzas of a perfectly aligned love poem behind that landscape
on the other side of us, the other side of the world.

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Pansy Maurer-Alvarez, born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Pennsylvania and studied at universities in the US, Spain and Switzerland, settling permanently in France. Her work is widely published and she is the author of 6 collections of poetry, including In a Form of Suspension (corrupt press) and Oranges in January (Knives Forks and Spoons Press).