Dan Gerber is the author of three novels, a short story collection, two works of nonfiction, and numerous books of poems, including The End of Michelangelo (Copper Canyon Press, 2022); A Primer on Parallel Lives; Sailing through Cassiopeia, winner of the 2013 Society of Midland Authors Award for poetry; and Particles. He has received the Michigan Author Award and the Mark Twain Award for distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature and has had work included in Best American Poetry. Gerber lives with his wife, Debbie, in the mountains of Central California.

Three Poems

by Dan Gerber

Cinema Paradiso

On a morning in November

words appeared at the end of my pen
like the answer to a question
I hadn’t yet asked.

One became a condor, another
a cloud,
while a third word, spinosity,
came to life in the dream of a thistle.

Which is more real,
the snow or the snowball,
the word or the letters of which
it’s composed?


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