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Jane Duran

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Three poems from a new sequence, Graceline

Whenever I stayed on that riding farm
only a few miles from Santiago

I would go for long walks alone
out into the almond orchard

that had so many points of entry and exit.
I would step over the horse manure in the pasture,

the weather would be fine and dry, good
for riding bareback.

As I walked I approached the Andes –
an intelligence, intricate as those fingerprints

on rocks in the Valle del Encanto,
where figures were carved in stripes

and circles – headdresses, staring eyes,
mouthless and faint in the sun.

I was 12, the Andes just ahead,
stepping back from me in a kind of easy,

lasting dance, an easy dare.

Jane Duran’s collection, Breathe Now, Breathe (Enitharmon 1995) received the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Enitharmon published Silences from the Spanish Civil War in 2002, and Coastal, a PBS Recommendation, in 2005.

Coastal is reviewed on page 71.

Page(s) 33

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