Passe-Port

Rosemary Sullivan
From:   Blue Panic. Black Moss Press, 1991, p 47

We pass the turnstile
into your country.
The computer spits you out—
You're no longer on its mind.

I always thought a country
was the way the trees unleave
in your head or the snow
falls on your childhood, thought it
part of the landscape you become.
The stories that sink roots into history
and repeat themselves like litanies:
the family,
bone-ladder you descended
from somewhere.

But you tell me a country
is really a door.
They can close it.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7 | Poem 8 | Poem 9 | Poem 10 | Poem 11 | Poem 12 | Poem 13 | Poem 14

Rosemary Sullivan's works copyright © to the author.