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August 2022
Michael Gessner
mjcg3@aol.com / www.michaelgessner.com
Bio Note: My most recent title is Nightshades released earlier this year. Forthcoming publications include "Black Lightning," taken by The Wallace Stevens Journal to appear in 2023; La Citta Immaginaria, on "Wilde's Tomb," (lacittaimmaginaria.com/tag/michael-gessner/) and Danse Macabre posted some poems last month. Terminus The Pastoral, a novella will be out in ebook within a few months from an Australian publisher, and another novella set in Degas' Paris should be completed by the end of the year. In the meantime, here is a summer poem about the primacy of biological ensembles, the body's communications, and perhaps, a different view of the nature of language itself.

Vegas Pool Girls

The scholars of the body 
have arrived, dolled up
in tropical colors, sprawling
in lawn chairs in anticipation
of the linguists’ conference,
translators of poses and lotions,
confident and wise, dreamy-eyed
bodies themselves in perfect motion,
as if shape, contour and line 
exist independent of mind.
This poem was first included in the collection Surfaces, (March Street Press, 2006).
©2022 Michael Gessner
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL