Prague
Someone had left a mannequin in the street.
It was wearing a wedding dress and –
But no,
It was a woman, standing on a box.
A small crowd had gathered around her
And her eyes were closed;
I hesitated, then
Reached down to the can at her feet
As if I were bending to pet a stranger's dog
And, as though I had deposited a soul, [i]chink[/i],
Her eyelids fluttered open,
Her fingers flickered,
She awoke like Hermione
Astonishing her husband
In the miraculous final scene of [i]The Winter's Tale[/i].
Later, through the window of a restaurant,
I saw her dash across a crowded street,
Clutching her skirts to keep them from the rain.
Bio Note
James Pollock's poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Texas Review, Gulf Coast, and Western Humanities Review, among several others. He teaches creative writing and modern European literature at Loras College in Iowa, and was recently a work-study scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
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James
Pollock
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