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The Ghost of Madame Cézanne
Madame Cézanne
Haunts my study
In ghostlike apparition
She appears
Again and again
With cheeks painted a bit too red
And makeup caked across her face
Each time I see her
I think she wears
The countenance of strife
The shades of sadness
She never speaks but
Sits silently in a chair
Posed in resentment
Her eyes angry openings
Her mouth closed and pouting
Her jaw clenched
A face hard
And humorless
She is a model of domestic troubles
Wearing a green hat
Anna Kournakova
She walks in shadows
Comes in darkness
Like a spirit
Her movements invisible and silent
Like the first weak breeze of spring
Nearly here and half not
She wears the sheerest gauze fabric
That is spun by the phantoms of my fantasies
Who work into the late hours of night
Like the tired and weary women
That labor for low wages
In Indonesian sweatshops
She wiggles into my bed whispering words
And touching me like a Muse
To awaken a Disneyland of desire
Were I hang stappadoed
From the highest ceiling beams
In her most malicious dreams
Wings
Touching her in darkness
My hands fly
Across her skin like winged things
Hovering for a moment
Then gliding in sweeping motions
That rise and dive to follow her form
Aerial in their grace
Ethereal in movement
And when they come to rest
Like a bird upon a perch
They are weightless
And she feels only a fluttering
A brush of feathers
Across her flesh
On a night
When touch became sight
Doug Tanoury was born and raised in Detroit and attended Wayne State University.
His work has been published widely both in print and in electronic form. A number of his poetry collections
are available in ebook form at: The Poetry of Doug Tanoury and The Poetry of Doug Tanoury. Doug's poetry has been
the subject of features in the New York Times Online and The Detroit News. One of his poems also
won Honorable Mention in the Detroit Metro Times "Get Lit" special issue of 2006.
Much of Doug's online work can be read by typing his last name into any Internet search engine.
Funky Dog Publishing
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