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Jules & moi

80% of success is showing up.

—Woody Allen

 

A morning of tiles, park benches & sun, green, un-

aggressive in mid-year, with books & the runaway jury of girls

off to the Indian Ocean, Madagascar, to islands, Maurice, Reunion—

then the arabesques of black iron doors, 1 to 9 ABCD (you have to know), stun-

ning, this hour. That atelier is a red awning opening, oh nothing, beckon-

ing to an impasse where Jonathan, the ladybug, moves side-

ways toward Stanislas, just another name, proves

we are here, Our Lady of the Cars, the Fields—Notre Dame des Champs.

To stone columns, where Madeleine meets magenta, (church not girl, not

my runaway jury of girls) as clouds part to Madura,

we move closer to the sky’s crux

up & back to where we began, unfamiliar, le Cardinal—sun starts

slanting by tables. This just happened: dreadlocks, and who

is Gus anyway & why isn’t he here with us—it’s the last cut of the scissors.

 


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is Paris Editor for Tin House magazine and is the author of Knock Knock (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010). Her poems, essays and interviews have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Rumpus, Post Road and other venues and numerous anthologies, including Food and Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast; and Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House. She lives in Paris, where she curates Shakespeare & Company Bookshop’s weekly reading series, and teaches creative writing and poetry at the American University of Paris.



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