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      September 21, 2010The Red Model IIJosé Edmundo Ocampo Reyes

      René Magritte, oil on canvas

       

      On the calculous clay, two pennies
      stare down a lone dime,

       

       

      while a matchstick pretends to ignore
      the cigarette it once kissed. Someday

       

       

      the oak wall on which I lean
      will warp and shed, splinter

       

       

      by splinter, long since forgotten
      by those who erected it. What is

       

       

      the point of news, when in the end
      all we are left with are scraps

       

       

      that no one can decode?
      I sigh, longing for streams

       

       

      of stock tickers, Monday-morning trains.
      O to escape the tyranny of inaction!

       

       

      To unlace and take off my feet,
      and run to the office bareshoe!

      from #24 - Winter 2005

      José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes

      “When I was a high school senior, my class would make weekly visits to a nearby public school to tutor a group of sixth-graders. Towards the end of the year, I decided to bring my students some poems. One girl innocently uttered one of the wisest things anyone has ever said about poetry: ‘Poetry is an encyclopedia.’”