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By Camille Rankine

In the half-light, I am most
at home, my shadow
as company.
 
When I feel hot, I push a button
to make it stop. I mean this stain on my mind
I can’t get out. How human
 
I seem. Like modern man,
I traffic in extinction. I have a gift.
Like an animal, I sustain.
 
A flock of birds
when touched, I scatter. I won’t approach
until the back is turned.
 
My heart betrays. I confess: I am afraid.
How selfish of me.
When there’s no one here, I halve
 
the distance between
our bodies infinitesimally.
In this long passageway, I pose
 
against the wallpaper, dig
my heels in, catch the light.
In my vision, the back door opens
 
on a garden that is always
in bloom. The dogs
are chained so they can’t attack like I know
 
they want to. In the next yard
over, honeybees swarm
and their sound is huge.


Camille Rankine, "The Current Isolationism" from Incorrect Merciful Impulses. Copyright © 2016 by Camille Rankine. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Incorrect Merciful Impulses (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)

  • Arts & Sciences
  • Nature

Poet Bio

Camille Rankine
Born in Portland, Oregon, poet Camille Rankine earned a BA at Harvard University and an MFA at Columbia University. She has served on the staff of the Cave Canem Foundation. She lives in New York City, where she teaches at and directs the Manhattanville College MFA program, serves as editorial director for the online literary journal The Manhattanville Review, and sings with the band Miru Mir. Rankine’s nimble, urgent poems are often concerned with landscape, history, and intimacy.  See More By This Poet

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