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Poetry

Gary Beaumier

I have a degree in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I have been a finalist for the Luminaire Award for my poem titled “Ten Cents” as well as the Joy Bale Boone Award for my poem “The Migratory Habits of Dreams in Late Autumn”. My chapbook “From My Family to Yours” has been published by Finishing Line Press. My poem “The Rio Grande” was nominated for the “Best of the Net” award and I won first prize for Streetlight Magazine for my poem “Night Train to Paris.” I was a finalist for the New Millenium Writings for my poem “From Certain Distances in Space I Still See My Brother”. I was recently shortlisted for the Charles Bukowski contest from Raw Arts Review for my poem “Ghosting”. I was also a finalist for Wingless Dreamers contest for the poem “The Complete History of Our First Kiss”. I won the the Love Poetry contest as well as the Button poetry contest for Flying Ketchup Press and was a finalist for my poem “Places I Have Known” for The Raw Arts Review. I have been a teacher, a bookstore manager and a gandydancer for one summer a long time ago. I used to build wooden sailboats. I once taught poetry in a woman’s prison.

Dmitri I Have No Music for This

How did you find the notes Dmitri
amongst artillery shells or the snare of machine gun fire?
I hear there were frozen corpses in the streets
and nowhere to bury them
while some ate wallpaper paste for lack of food
and when the Stukas screamed down
did you hear the minor chords
and convert them to a melody
for the violins and cellos
for your city who gathered the
starving to hear a starving orchestra
play your creation
while still surrounded

Dmitri I have no music for this
with the whole of mankind besieged
when even the ones you love
may carry the enemy
that will cull the old and the weak
when even a warm embrace is insidious
and we are turned against our own hands

Dmitri I have no music for this
when the hospitals are jammed to bursting
I only hear the congested wheeze
and the fevered delirium
when I look from the window and wonder
if the planet has turned irreparably
and will not turn back

Dmitri I have no music for this

(Dmitri Shostakovich wrote Seventh Sympathy while Stalingrad was under siege by the German Army during the Second World War.)

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