Poems

Below you will find a collection of sample poems. If you're interested in reading more, click on the publications link in the navigation bar to buy copies of Camille's latest collection.

Poems from Corruption

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Monday Music 

Nobody, no one, not one, not a single one
hears me at the piano playing the white keys.

I make a truant sound.
I am as eloquent as anything

I heard in the world on Sunday.

Do you remember those conversations?
Accidental, repetitious as language in dreams?

I wonder why it is I know so little
about the black keys,

how they marry and come apart
in the history of a scherzo

or in the history of a scene
in which I play myself

playing only the white keys.

Sometimes I write myself 
into a sheet of music

using the usual notations,
my little signs and jokes

of self disappearing.

White, white paper whites
bloom in winter.

There are birches outside the house.
White crocuses in the snow.

The house is white too.

Above the door, on the lintel,
someone’s carved the words,

Monday Music Club 1912.

Before the first war happened and the other wars,
the door swings open on its iron hinge

and there’s no one at the piano,
nobody I tell you,

as the door swings open.

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