Sudden Prose Reprints: Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), fifth selection

Here is the fifth prose poem from Greek Passages I wanted to bring to a wider audience:

I lie in bed dreaming the street plan / corners of dark northern towns, complex of small back streets I can’t quite remember / My mother held my hand at the street edge / long ago, and we had our thin riches / there too, the future sailed up the bay as the potential, it seemed, of the entire land / held in the local hand // I dream this. Sound outside, swishing / of trees in gusts of wind / the red earth under the sky’s black cloak / That I should come so far from such streets / rejoicing in the same fear.

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