Vox Populi
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Jose Padua: What I’m Reading
Our premiere anatomist draws themes as sharp as razors, has managed to stay perfectly balanced, in full possession of her craft. Each one is a gift, a rich visual palette over sharp portraits of people, it embodies the specific arresting psycho- logical landscape, brief but powerful moments, and abandonment, after our failure and neglect. History is layered, full of bones and ghosts, herself a storm of beau- tiful, frightening talent. Like the estranged lover in one of her poems, her lines measure the vulnerable grace of working people: What is time? Why are you wasting your life?
Copyright 2022 Jose Padua
A poem constructed from the blurbs for Bob Hicok’s Insomnia Diary, Julianna Baggott’s This Country of Mothers, Natasha Trethewey’s Domestic Work and Native Guard, Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, Ron Padgett’s How to Be Perfect, and Claudia Emerson’s Late Wife.
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Photograph of a building in Middletown, Pennsylvania, by Jose Padua.
Vox Populi 
A brilliant “found” poem ❤️
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Yes, the poem is a crafted series of quotations.
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