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John Freeman is a writer, a literary critic, the former president of the National Book Critics Circle, and a recipient of the James Patterson Pageturner Award. His numerous works include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as a trilogy of anthologies about inequality, including Tales of Two Planets, which features stories about the climate crisis from around the world. He is also the author of three poetry collections, Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Freeman lives in New York City.

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Passing and Other Poems

by John Freeman
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Passing

Walking to a pool hall we
pass down an empty street
late-summer shutters open
light brushes the top of my
head I look up and meet
a woman’s eyes staring
down from a third-floor
window    She wears a
a thin black party dress
behind her a chandelier
glows    It’s early evening
the night could go another
way and for the length
of a stride it could

Piano

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