Norman Dubie is the author of numerous books of poetry, including The Volcano; The Quotations of Bone, winner of the 2016 Griffin International Poetry Prize; and Robert Schumann Is Mad Again (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). The recipient of the Bess Hokin Prize from the Poetry Foundation and the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry, Dubie lives and teaches in Tempe, Arizona.

Four Poems

by Norman Dubie

Joan of Arc

You were almost still a young girl
staring at a dead horse
who had broken its leg
in the freshly painted yellow garden—            then,

you asked no one
for an explanation, thinking
all experience is frozen, of
the moment, of
the instant when two pale breasts
fall from a black sling frayed at the edges—
well, not quite, but again
of that moment and serial
People on couch
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