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March 13, 2025

My Teenager

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.png file of the poem, the poem text reads as follows: Last thing I thought I wanted in life invite the adolescent to tea, who knew what was true and anything else wouldn’t do, who’d sit with her a minute more than the calendrical reality, yet now will I pause and beckon with a little twitch of the shoulder you don’t want to beckon too broadly, the very weakness of gesture you may trace to the cool required balanced by warm desire, I do not think of her much I’m almost unable to think of her a curtain drops in front of her if she is anywhere near, yet I beckon with that one shoulder and in so doing she tends to flicker in my own person, and then I don’t think that I come as such a surprise to her,

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Jana Prikryl’s latest book of poems is Midwood.

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Magazine, Poetry, April 2025

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