(Self-portrait with sunspots and stripes, May 2013.)

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He's not unreasonable:

because I've asked, he shows me his mercy --
a complicated arrangement
of holes and

hooks, buckles. What else did you think
mercy looked like,

he says and, demonstrating, he straps it on, then takes it off.

- Carl Phillips, from his poem Singing 

(read this morning in his book The Rest of Love)

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