Corners by Stephen Dunn

 
I've sought out corner bars, lived in corner houses;    
  like everyone else I've reserved  
corner tables, thinking they'd be sufficient.     
  I've met at corners  
perceived as crossroads, loved to find love     
  leaning against a lamp post  
but have known the abruptness of corners too, 
  the pivot, the silence.  
I've sat in corners at parties hoping for someone     
  who knew the virtue  
of both distance and close quarters, someone with a     
  corner person's taste  for intimacy, hard won, rising out of 
shyness  and desire.  
  And I've turned corners there was no going back to,     
corners  in the middle of a room that led     
  to Spain or solitude.  
And always the thin line between corner     
  and cornered,  
the good corners of bodies and those severe bodies     
  that permit no repose,  
the places we retreat to, the places we can't bear     
  to be found.  

~ from New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994  
(W.W. Norton and Company, 1995)
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Unfurnished Apartment by Jason Heroux