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Published: Wed Apr 15 2009
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
Blur

After the bombs
_         _ and the buildings blow
_         _ _         _ I call Clover, Clover
and you appear—
_         _ a dream limned in smoke.

Clover, my hermaphroditic dear,
_         _ I kiss your singed
_         _ _         _ leaflet ears and fawn
in a café in Eilat.
_         _ Clover sips from a demitasse.

Only a few sesame seeds left
_         _ and the porcelain carried away.
_         _ _         _ Morning crawls toward
afternoon, and the sun
_         _ says it’s time for wine

to drown this red day.
_         _ I hear there’s a crater
_         _ _         _ where our bed last lay
at the Hotel de Ruin.
_         _ A portrait of dancing

lights and fire balloons,
_         _ a painterly gasoline blur.
_         _ _         _ Let’s find a sailboat,
bread, zatar, and figs
_         _ and watch the distance burn.

See what's inside AGNI 69

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of five collections of poetry and two chapbooks, among them The Singing Pills (Four Way Books, forthcoming 2024), winner of the Levis Prize in Poetry; The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017); *Lullaby (with Exit Sign) *​​​​​​(Saturnalia, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012); and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), which won the Margie Book Prize. Her chapbook, Show Me Yours  (Laurel Review/GreenTower Press, 2010), was awarded the 2009 Midwest Poets Series Award. She is also co-author, with Michelle Boisseau, of Writing Poems, 8th edition (Pearson/Longman, 2011). Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry JournalColorado ReviewAGNIDenver QuarterlyThe Iowa Review, *The Kenyon Review, *PloughsharesPrairie SchoonerTriQuarterly, and elsewhere. An NEA fellow, she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. (updated 4/2023)

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