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      January 13, 2014[The Age We Live In]Virginia Smith

      By virtue of being a woman alone,
      there are men who assume interest

      on my part must be personal and
      sexual. This is not true

      of all men—only those I have met: or not met:
      or smiled at: or passed in the street.

      A free-floating assumption, I know, adrift
      beneath words, making it almost a favor

      when a man I was partnered with
      at a conference introduced himself
      as very, very married, giving me a chance

                    to relieve him directly
      by declaring myself very, very lesbian:

      a thin-bright, only slightly bitter lie,
      and nothing like real desire, which is more
      violent: unswerving: rare.

                    You are here now,
      face hidden in hands, refusing again

      to believe in a beginning that keeps bringing
      us back to this point

      of leaving: my leaving, yours. I tell you to
      step into this moment, toward another

      and another, toward me, but the truth is
      you will make of me what you can, and I
      have to let you

      return to before I existed, real desire wanting real
      erasure:     days     months     years

      I have stood nearly fifty in this body,
      long enough

      to grow unashamed of want without trying
      to make an art of it. Long enough to know
      what I have: each night

      from #40 - Summer 2013

      Virginia Smith

      “I wrote ‘[The Age We Live In]’ while (pretty clearly and happily) under the influence of Larry Levis. I like his idea that writing poetry is a way of using your whole mind up, all the way. Poems have this incredible ability to embody the most adult and intimate language it is possible to imagine, and I try to jump in at the highest level I can, every day.”