In her own words...


"Sequestrienne"

2002


Don't look at me
for answers. Who am I but
a sobriquet,
a teeth-grinder,
grinder of color,
and vanishing point?

There was a time
of middle distance, unforgettable,
a sort of lace-cut
flame-green filament
to ravish my
skintight eyes.

Heaven's motes sift
to salt-white — paint is ground
to silence; and I,
I am bound, unquiet,
a shade of blue
in the studio.

If it isn't too late
let me waste one day away
from my history.
Let me see without
looking inside
at broken glass.
 
 

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About this work


“Sequestrienne” was first published in Poetry, Vol. 180, no. 1 (April 2002), p. 18, and included in A Table of Content, 2004, p. 58.  It is also included in Dorothea Tanning's book, A Table of Content: Poems, New York: Graywolf Press, 2004, p. 58, and may not be reprinted without the publisher's permission.

J. D. McClatchy recorded a reading of this poem on April 17, 2015. 



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