Doug Tanoury is a lifelong poet whose work has appeared widely in both print and online journals. He is the author of more than twenty chapbooks, including St. Mary’s Art Cloister, Tolstoy’s Ghost, and Chicago Poems. An outsider artist by circumstance and choice, Tanoury writes outside the academic tradition, bringing a distinct voice shaped by lived experience rather than formal literary training.
He holds a BBA and has spent much of his professional life as a management consultant, a background that informs the clarity and structure underlying his work. His poetry often explores themes of place, memory, spirituality, and the emotional landscapes of urban life with a lilting lyricism, particularly in and around Detroit.
Tanoury continues to write and submit new work, maintaining a steady presence in contemporary poetry while remaining independent of academic affiliation.
I.
It is sunset in Barcelona
and I am walking with her,
watching how the light shifts
toward the red side of the spectrum,
painting the pale underside
of the sycamore leaves
in a watercolor wash of soft pink.
I wonder…the sound of her voice
interrupts my thought…
Touching her as I speak,
unconsciously running
my finger down her upper arm,
lightly, barely touching,
my nails leave a thin line
like a scalpel blade
the twilight color of the air,
is the saline and blood
of a fresh surgical incision.
I wonder how faithfully
I will remember this moment
at some far future point
II.
when light sinks a bit further
down the spectrum from reds
to blues to violet hues
with this introspection,
this post-mortem of a moment
that is a corpse laid out
on an autopsy table,
where all personal identification
is a single poem
written on a tag and tied
to a toe that tells the tale
of what is important
when our voices fall silent
and the leaves no longer twist
on their stems in the breeze
but remain still and unmoving
and the vertical and horizontal coordinates
that separate us in space
shrink to the narrowness of a
gothic street, sunken in the shadows
of sunset in Barcelona.
For other contributions by Doug Tanoury, please follow the links below:
Poetry in this post: © Doug Tanoury
Published with the permission of Doug Tanoury