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Sean Thomas Dougherty

  • portlandbove
  • Jul 4
  • 1 min read


GS with “Tanka” by Shizuka Omori, Translation by Yuki Tanaka


Why return to the sky if not for the birds

Composing their own choreography that


Criss crosses like skates on ice. I couldn’t

Figure eight on the pond. When I first step


Into the clouds I won’t be back

Like the Buddhist monk who saw the


Deer in his mind & transformed the second

He died into a fawn. No, to be a person


Who lived once is enough: to be the pronoun

I & know You Dear Luck if lacerated


By this life is absence like a river by

Its meaning indecipherable like lines the


Skaters make on ice, or cranes against the sunset—




Sean Thomas Dougherty's most recent book is Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions.  He works as a caregiver and Medtech in Erie, PA.

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