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Tomás Q. Morín is the author of the poetry collections A Larger Country, winner of the APR/Honickman Prize, and Patient Zero (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), and translator of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu. Third Place winner in Narrative’s First Annual Poetry Contest, he is coeditor, with Mari L’Esperance, of the anthology Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. Morín lives in Texas.

Photograph by Erin Evans.



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At the Supermarket

by Tomás Q. Morín
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What have I forgotten? Milk for bones—

Salt for blood—A fresh loaf
for sleep. Outside, Sunday morning
has expired. The line is long
for this hour. When the doors open
the squawks of gulls blown too far inland
announce nothing is impossible. The cashier
vanishes again for the cigarette key
and the moment slows the way moments do
when the eye is fixed for too long—:
People on couch
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Reader Comments

  • Reading Morin's disturbing poem on this Good Friday afternoon, its closure,...
  • Two lines shred me: "If I were trapped in a Rockwell"...

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