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One of my very good friends
at Stanford Vince Chaffey,

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he and I both became
incredible Larry Levis-philes--

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Larry Levis, who unfortunately
left the poetry world

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due to his death in 1996.

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And this is kind of an
angry elegy at Larry.

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"Broke Down Elegy."

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"My darling pegs
a kiss to her hand

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then the roof of the van
whenever we pass hazard lights,

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raised hoods, defunct, marooned,
the otherwise stranded.

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I-80 corridor makes
way to hog and corn,

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Nebraska's flat redundancy,
Platte River, five, six times,

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Continental Divide, Wyoming
rain, and eggs underdone.

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In Utah, my gut drops
out an unexpected ditch.

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Salt Lake-- I am
disconsolate in this cafe.

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A maple, full June green, stands
the corner of nine and nine,

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and Larry, you've left that
pink smudge on the horizon.

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I won't forgive your
addictions today,

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though I think you'd be pleased
that Hawaiian shirts are all

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the season's rage
and the sun still

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sets where it's
become accustomed.

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Behind me somewhere,
a blackening thumbnail

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teaches a lesson in patience--

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a lesson I'm bound to deny,
even as that nails sloughs off,

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though not for weeks now.

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And because I'm a wreck
waiting for metal,

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my darling guides us past
the sun flaring solstice,

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past the arid,
past rows and rows

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of orderly agriculture,
where something of Larry

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is still swamping peaches--

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peaches I'll buy in a month
for my darling's cobbler that

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won't thicken, though while
eat it á la mode while my thumb

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throbs like a phantom.

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I've never seen ghosts,
though I hear them scratching

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in roves in their slack mouths.

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Larry, the mundane measure of
your habitual heart fails us.

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Even now, I wander too far
across the center divide,

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my darling asleep against glass.

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It's your fault, Larry.

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These oncoming rigs, blood
blooming under that black nail,

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these miles left to me."

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