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Column 003

Bessie Dreaming Bear

Intro by Ted Kooser
04.20.2005

A poem need not go on at great length to accom­plish the work of con­vey­ing some­thing mean­ing­ful to its read­ers. In the fol­low­ing poem by the late Marnie Walsh, just a few words, writ­ten as if they’d been record­ed in exact­ly the man­ner in which they’d been spo­ken, tell us not only about the miss­ing woman in the red high heels, but a lit­tle some­thing about the speak­er as well.

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Bessie Dreaming Bear

By Marnie Walsh
we all went to town one day
went to a store
bought you new shoes
red   high heels
   
aint seen you since

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from A Taste of the Knife, Ahsahta Press, Boise, ID, 1976, by permission of Tom Trusky, literary executor of the Walsh estate. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 004

Another Feeling

Column 002

At the Grave

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