About the Feature

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A verb may well conceal a noun.
A noun may conceal a fiddler beetle.
A beetle may conceal an agnostic.
An agnostic may conceal a shepherd’s pie.
A shepherd may conceal your mother-in-law.
Your mother-in-law may conceal a can of pineapple rings.
Or she might not conceal them at all.
A can of pineapple rings may well conceal the blue of his eye before he.
The blue of his eye may well conceal a cast-iron All Nighter wood stove.
A stove may conceal the emissions of seven city buses.
Seven city buses may conceal a bamboo mat.
A mat made of bamboo may conceal a malapropism.
A malaprop may well conceal one clever emendation.
One emendation may conceal an abiding sadness.
Or it might not conceal it at all.
An abiding sadness may conceal a slow-turning Ferris wheel.
A Ferris wheel may conceal a spark of agitation.
A spark of agitation may well conceal a prowling libido.
Or it might not conceal it at all.
A spark of agitation may also conceal a mouth.
Regret may conceal the smoky sheen of oak.
The sheen of oak may conceal a monk as he fetches water.
A monk may conceal the pleasure of eating each section of an orange, slowly.
The pleasure of orange-eating may conceal the links in a chain fence.
A chain-link fence may well conceal syntax.
Syntax may well conceal rhetoric.
Rhetoric may conceal ideology.
Ideology may conceal a hunger for bright objects.
Or it might not conceal it at all.
Bright objects may well conceal a lust for someone else’s wife.
A lust for someone else’s wife may conceal a fiddler beetle. Or not at all.

About the Author

Rachel Galvin’s collection of poems, Pulleys & Locomotion, was published in 2009. Her poems and translations appear in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Drunken Boat, and Gulf Coast. Her translation of Raymond Queneau’s Courir les rues, called Hitting the Streets, is forthcoming from Carcanet Press (2013). She teaches at Princeton University.