Doug Tanoury was born and raised in Detroit and attended Wayne State University. His work has been published widely both in print and in electronic form. A number of his poetry collections are available in ebook form here. In fact much of his online work can be read by typing his last name into any Internet search engine. Doug’s poetry has the subject of features in the New York Times Online and The Detroit News. One of his poems also won Honorable Mention in the Detroit Metro Times “Get Lit” special issue of 2006

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SELECTED POETRY

by
Doug Tanoury

THE PRESENCE OF YOUR ABSENCE

Today, I came home to empty rooms.
Stillness and silence lie on the rugs
Like an old dog reluctant to move,
And I am reminded
By the ghost of motion,
A spirit of sound, some spectral
Scent that still haunts these rooms,
As I stand in the presence of
Of your absence.
If memory were a ragged couch
Or worn chair I would carry
It out and set it by the curb,
Yet I cannot cast out phantoms
That possess this place and
Follow me about from room to room
Like a loyal dog, unwilling
To leave me unattended.
Today, at the door I was greeted
By your memory and paused
At the threshold a moment
To acknowledge you gone,
Like a happy fixture,
A friendly furnishing
That sat in my living room
For many years, now
Replaced by empty space,
As I wait in the presence of your
Absence, there is nowhere to sit.

© Doug Tanoury

---

AGAMEMNON HAS AIDS

I met a man who wore
The death mask of Agamemnon
And he told me “That death
Like every other moment of your life
Is something that happens to you
I came in contact with the body fluids
Of Iphigenia without surgical mask
Or gloves and I had unprotected sex
With Achilles and made love to
Clytemnestra without a condom”
And all of Mycenae whispers
Every woman’s husband
And every man’s wife In irony fitting
Greek drama
The hero home from Ilium
To bedsores lesions and conspicuous
Consumption ravaged now and stricken
With the strictly modern malady
That has turned him suddenly old
Like King Priam and just as sad

© Doug Tanoury

---

ODE TO FEET

I have seen poetic feet so perfect,
The very smallest units
Of patterned stress,
Soft idioms of Iambic
And drum beats of Anapestic,
That march across the carpet
In measured meter toward full-length mirrors.
I am the bard of bare soles
And naked ankles,
Of fallen arches and
Swollen heels,
Of toenails
Pedicured and painted,
That catch the light
Like so many cut sapphires,
All arranged
In descending order of size.
I have crafted couplets in Trochaic,
And started the heartbeat of lines in Spondaic,
For I am the poet of feet,
Perfect and imperfect,
Poetic
And otherwise,
Of bunions, bumps and bent toes,
Carried within or laid upon
A pump, mule, sandal or thong.

© Doug Tanoury

---

THE PHYSICS OF TEA

Sitting in the living room
Drinking tea with her and
Talking about special relativity
And the fact that the most distant
Galaxies are racing away from us
At 80 percent of the speed of light and
As she considers this

Pulling a wayward strand of hair
From her face, she begins to twirl it,
Worrying it between her fingers, and
I am touched by the girlishness
Of this gesture, as she says very seriously:
"Gravity is a fear of being alone"
I laugh

Setting my tea down on the table
Hearing the percussion click
Of a china cup meeting the saucer and
As she smiles the freckles on her cheeks
Gravitate together in Newtonian fashion
And I know now that
What holds everything together
Is simply deep attraction.

© Doug Tanoury

---

SCHRODINGER'S CAT

Like Schrodinger's cat
I find myself in two different states at once.
You see,
It's all rather confused
And uncertain,
At the same moment
I love her,
And yet
I do not.
In the hard determinism
Of Saturday morning breakfast,
She sips her tea,
And I spread my jam slowly
Across a slice of toast,
Pondering
My choices
And reforming my past.
In the solipsism
Of my most solitary and selfish thoughts,
At the point
Where all possible histories
And futures meet,
There is another woman
With a different smile
Asking me to pass the cream.

© Doug Tanoury

---

SAGE WITH UMBRELLA

Sage With Umbrella
Watches The Collapse
Of The Modern Age

I remember
It was a perfect summer day
The kind that only seems to occur
In early September,
With a sky so azure
It seemed to glow with some
Inner luminescence
And the vivid color finish
They spray on new cars in Detroit,
The ice blue sports cars and
Peacock blue sedans.

A day so temperate that
The air feels perfect against the skin.
It is more an absence of temperature,
As if both hot and cold have somehow slipped
Below the point of perception and the air
Itself has become imperceptible.

Ah, such a day
Of blue placid beauty.
And then the rains began.
In ways fitting for our age,
In abstract and surreal images,
In some post modernistic vision,
With glass and concrete towers
Intertwined with airplanes,
Add to that the obligatory apocalyptic
Flames and smoke and you have a work that
Dali would paint, a Warhol or a Max.
And the rain began.

It rained paper and desks,
Chairs and tables,
All the mundane debris
Of daily life.
And it rained people,
Arm flailing,
Legs kicking,
It rained fire,
It rained rock,
It rained dust.

And I find myself in a Peter Max
Oil on canvass, entitled:
"Sage With Umbrella
Watches The Collapse
Of The Modern Age"

© Doug Tanoury