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Shawn Sorensen
Winter 2008
Beauty Sleep
I look at you and recall the words
“beauty sleep”, and think,
you must have slept your whole life.
Dribble slips from your lips,
meanders a slow, swaddling
run down the East Rim of your arm
to gather in the hollow of my elbow,
a tide pool of Maui;
the sight-seeing
the mist
inviting.
Your mouth closes, opens,
and I think of shiraz dribbling
from your mouth to mine
and dozens of synonyms
that join “curve” with the way
your neck sneaks softly onto your shoulder,
the way Lolo Pass
lowers itself onto Flathead Lake,
the way your kind eye softens
the trench warfare between my eyebrows.
Your biceps flutter, shudder,
a butterfly easting
towards the Amazon, opening its wings,
mimicking the birds of paradise
that are its most ardent predators,
and I think of joining
the Corps of Discovery, the Marco Polo
brigade, beaming
at your fullness,
weighing your rich soil,
internalizing
your never-endingness.
No Universe We Know
We reached Webuye town, St.
Anthony School For the Hearing Impaired,
all my senses made senseless, you are
embraced by hundreds of black faces ivory smiles
at the gate, hands and arms reaching
out to hold, brightness surrounding
your outline burning away
the edges of Kenya’s borders,
and I give up my definition
of honeymoon, of marriage
and instead embrace the endless air of our
days, rarely weighing the past.
Our universe means unknown sovereignties,
yet always a familiar sensation, your presence
pushing me to more unknowns.
One more dozen handshakes and we are led
to a lunch hall full of kale, corn paste and inquiring eyes,
then your old residence, volunteer who vacates his lodging for
our fledgling endeavor of mapping a growing cosmos of stars.
Tell me you love me tell me especially
after the last student has smiled. We are
the dawn, the trembling, awakening child.
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A former busboy, grade-school teacher, international human rights volunteer and now bookstore manager, Shawn recently married and is filling his Portland, OR house with art experienced on his recent honeymoon to Kenya. His poems have previously appeared in The Whitefish Free Press and The Oak. “Beauty Sleep” won 1st Honorable Mention in the Oregon State Poetry Association’s Fall 2007 contest. |
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