Lowell’s Briefcase
On the seat beside him, in the back of the taxicab where his heart finally stopped, was the briefcase he never lost. Unlike lovers, his great troubled mind, waking in the blue of shame, regret, a locked razor in his hand, this birthday present survived the man himself. More poems were inside, living fragments, lines, verses in a day book mixed with cigarettes, a pair of glasses. Red dust, rocks pushed up by an earthquake, an iron church bell, lines, sinkers, bloodstained hooks, the fisherman’s net was still there to cast on the widest water. His broken body, purple face, were taken away on...
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