POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…
Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.
Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.
the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.
I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.
The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…
and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble
Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.
