This poem featured on Poet Republik is sampling from Mark Lamoureux’s, new collection, Horologion, just out from Poet Republik Ltd. “Three in the Afternoon,” is a sampling of this collection which at points is a gathering of hours, which the poet Jim Dunn says creates “the illusion of time in this, our time of illusions.” Here’s to illusions. And here’s to you Mark, for this fine book of poetry. To purchase this collection, please click link at the bottom or go to poetrepublik.com
Three in the Afternoon
In the end
there was only patience—
no luck
no hope
no love
no lust
no pain
no pleasure
no hunger
no satiety
no fate
no choice
no action
no intent
no me
no you
no belief
no doubt
no god
no infinity
no art
no poetry
no matter
no nothing
only
patience.
Horologion, Mark Lamoreux’s brilliant Book of Hours, is an impressive suite of intriguing poems honoring the daily moments that create the illusion of time in this, our time of illusions. His poems sing as they keep time. They are lyrical hymns to the hours that capture the inequity of days gone by. Behind the hours and the seasons that mark our lives, these poems honor, in particular detail, the beauty and passion of a poet fully engaged in the world. Through the focused lens of his poetic eye, Lamoureux celebrates the moment with poems that triumph with feeling over forgetting, offering beautiful poetic visions over the mundane blindness of our daily routines. It’s “now or later/ now or never.”
~ Jim Dunn, author of Soft Launch
Lamoureux’s collection is fierce, powerful, and tender. It begins with a letter to the speaker’s unborn daughter, setting the tone for the book, a calm before the storm, an incubation of life: “Over the years the talking/computers in TV shows/began to sound more/& more human in this world,/which to you will be like a movie/you haven’t seen.” The book is keenly aware of its physical reality, its conception as a moment in time and body: “Real/time/of desire, elsewho:/in another zone/in other shoes,” which was a constant reminder of who we are and will be and have been, as a the reader. This collection reminds you of who you are, and who you love, and how to pause in the first place, to drink it all in. The last words of the collection say it all: “when you need & when you will not need/me: I love you./I love you.”
~ Joanna C. Valente, author of Marys of the Sea and editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault.
cover art by: Lissa Rivera
cover design: Michael Willis willisdesignstudio.com
$15.00
[stripe name=”Poet Republik Ltd” description=”horologion” amount=”1500″ billing=”true” shipping=”true”]
