Family Portraits, for Example

 

Our relations are implied

less by the sides we seem to take overtly
than by faint suggestions of a tainted
purpose just beneath the surface –
hidden – pressing up against the hide –

bidden by a flick of brow

or by a sigh – a sort of glide into gestation
which if we do not attend to it –
which most of us, forgivably, do not –
we’ll miss, and thereby miss the whole.

Family portraits for example are particularly

strange: oh, what a swollen range
of unexample they can be! For instance,
this – of me, and them. All that I can
think to say about it is ahem.










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