Logical Preposition
A. J. Bermudez
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I am often apologizing to my international students.
Why, they want to know, are we in a classroom, at a university, on a campus?
Why in a chair, at a desk, on the board?
What is it to be near / below / beyond / apart from?
on.
over.
versus.
against.
Has it always been this way or
on / at / in fact
is language an ocean or a war
to be explored
or won
or survived?
Has it always been this way or was host
once host and guest and ghost and hostage?
To whom or at whom or with whom
might we direct our inquiries?
Are we in the right
off the rocker
in deep shit?
What else, if we are patient,
might wash up in / at / on shore?
I am at trouble.
I am in a loss.
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A. J. Bermudez is an award-winning writer and filmmaker based in New York and Los Angeles. Her work has been featured at the Yale Center for British Art, Sundance, SXSW, the LGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival, and in a number of literary publications, including The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, Story, Electric Literature, Chicago Quarterly Review, Boulevard, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She is a former boxer and EMT, a 2023 Lambda Award Finalist and 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellow, and a winner of the Pushcart Prize, the Diverse Voices Award, the Page Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and the Iowa Short Fiction Award.
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Posted in Finding Home and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry