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Wheezie Via Long-Distance

By Michael RyanPosted Tuesday, May 6, 2003, at 10:50 AM ET

Listen to Michael Ryan reading this poem.

Alien bliss despite Shit
visiting you with its daily dose
that not paradoxically fuels
good talk and jokes

you biweekly infuse me with.
Everyone else I know goes ha ha
expelling breath but dear only
you inhale as you laugh.

I so love and have so long
Loved this large-barbed wheeze
dragging the depths
for what's alive inside

prehistoric camouflaged
fang-faced monsters that become
almost docile surfacing in
your exhilarating brilliance.

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Michael Ryan won the Lenore Marshall Prize for God Hunger and the 2005 Kingsley Tufts Award for New and Selected Poems.

Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.

To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.

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