Memories elysee

"There's no hole on earth where the heart drops through without bringing something with it." // Julie Marie Wade

          —James Allen Hall

Despite its long affiliation with loss, love also accrues: steady accumulation of boxes no longer reserved for shoes; strange tinctures & hollow rings, powdered with sugar or stronger; Kewpie dolls won in dart games & a dozen Trivial Pursuits, series of subsequent editions. And the luggage & the passports & the key-chain souvenirs, all figurative of course: also fashionable & futuristic & fact. You don't journey alone anymore. There is someone else to think of, to offer the window seat to—or perhaps she prefers the aisle. A twin bed looks suddenly lonely, & moreso the large bed, bereft of multiple bodies. Your pillow adopts her scent; your blankets no longer yours. The whole world pluraled, this second pulse shadowing your own. Old companions less companionable: radio, television—mere background noise. You begin to hear her voice reciting the grocery list or answering the phone. There is an attention to content but also to form. You form your syllables with her presence in mind, tailored to the shape of her body. You anticipate her wishes, her kisses, the warm place she has been sitting, wrapped in one of her sweaters with burly wood buttons & in-folded sleeves. You wonder if you are becoming transparent, if she can always see through you to the seed of your truest intention. Will she warm her hands on the low fire you always keep burning, clandestine & solely for her? Will you remain astonished by her luminous capacities: for pleasure, for penance & pardon? There is with her & without her but never beyond. She has altered your constitution. You find her in miniature & metonym: pretty crescents of her thumb nails, velveteen lobes of her ears. You can no longer watch Jeopardy! in solitude. Marlboro lights & lucky bamboo trigger visceral reminiscences. And the tatters on your map, torn together: Rapid City, South Dakota, Niagara Falls, Mount Shasta's elaborate & surreal setting sun. You remember bookcases in Nancy Drew stories, how they almost always hid the mystery stairs. She has passed through those passageways now; she has found your counterfeit copy of Great Expectations & tipped it just so, exposing the secret threshold. And the safe behind the picture with the traveling eyes, & the skeleton key sequestered in the flower pot, & all that spare change lining the sofa cushions. Not piracy or bribery, but a deep & unencumbered knowing. You have climbed into the hold together. You have sifted through the treasure. And each day past, & every day forward, you have crossed your hearts & murmured something about honor. You have ridden bicycles with cross-hatched baskets stuffed full to brimming with roses, all figurative of course: also tender & romantic & accurate beyond accounting. There have been no altars, nor will there be, but extraordinary kindnesses & tokens whose meanings exceed the scope of words. You have handled handkerchiefs & checkbooks & gold pocket-watches, meting out an uncertain number of hours. You have made public parables & private apologies. You have swept chimneys & taken out the ash. You have stood together on the fire escape of a condemned building. You have crossed your hearts & promised not to die.

Сегодня с утра в небе над Челябинской областью взорвался метеорит, несколько обломков упали на землю. Зрелище, конечно завораживающее. Взрывной волной повредило сотни зданий, выбиты окна, обрушились некоторые конструкции и балконы. О человеческих жертвах пока не сообщается, но судя по фото с места происшествия, разрушения серьезные. Три человека в тяжелом состоянии после падения метеорита. Госпитализированы 5. Всего не меньше 250 пострадавших - МВД / РИА Новости.

Многие автовладельцы записали момент взрыва метеорита на регистраторы (осторожно, авторская овучка):



"Представитель Центрального военного округа сообщил РИА Новости, что никаких происшествий с военно-воздушными судами в небе не зафиксировано. Это явление также видели жители Тюмени, они описывают увиденное как светящийся шар. По их словам, в небе до сих пор остался след от него." - РИА



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1.
A conversation begins
with a lie. and each

speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart

as if powerless, as if up against
a force of nature

A poem can begin
with a lie. And be torn up.

A conversation has other laws
recharges itself with its own

false energy, Cannot be torn
up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself.

Inscribes with its unreturning stylus
the isolation it denies.

2.
The classical music station
playing hour upon hour in the apartment

the picking up and picking up
and again picking up the telephone

The syllables uttering
the old script over and over

The loneliness of the liar
living in the formal network of the lie

twisting the dials to drown the terror
beneath the unsaid word

3.
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For Jane

225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.



Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame

some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here's a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.



Barfly

Jane, who has been dead for 31 years,
never could have
imagined that I would write a screenplay of our drinking
days together
and
that it would be made into a movie
and
that a beautiful movie star would play her
part.


I can hear Jane now: "A beautiful movie star? oh,
for Christ's sake!"


Jane, that's show biz, so go back to sleep, dear, because
no matter how hard they tried they
just couldn't find anybody exactly like
you.


and neither can
I.

"Photograph"
Andrea Gibson

I wish I was a photograph
tucked into the corners of your wallet
I wish I was a photograph
you carried like a future in your back pocket
I wish I was that face you show to strangers
when they ask you where you come from
I wish I was that someone that you come from
every time you get there
and when you get there
I wish I was that someone who got phone calls
and postcards saying
wish you were here
I wish you were here
autumn is the hardest season
the leaves are all falling
and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground
and the trees are naked and lonely
I keep trying to tell them
new leaves will come around in the spring
but you can't tell trees those things
they're like me they just stand there
and don't listen
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for Amy Judith Fanning
September 28, 1965-June 15, 2009

. . .the tangibles that survive us...
     —Sherry Fairchok

I want to touch everything she touched
yesterday: my fingers lingering on her shelves
and counter. I flip through the paperback
left half-read on the nightstand, inhale
the crumpled yellow hand towel near her
bathroom sink, breathe in the dust and dander
of her apartment air. My wife sifts a pile
of unpaid bills, lifts a framed photo, reads
an inscription on a birthday card. This home's
a sudden museum. From the living room, I hear
our daughter knock a glass thing over and giggle.
I move to save the breakables from wreckage
then remember: nothing can now be ruined.
We're the guests of someone gone. From a stack
of papers, I pull some brief note she wrote,
marvel at her slight, precise lettering. On her fridge
shelf, a tub of leftover spaghetti, an unfinished sandwich.
In a drawer the perishables sweat: a new head
of lettuce, a few pieces of fresh fruit. I choose
to eat the peach she chose from the grocery's
produce rows, not knowing it would outlive her.
Later, before we go to sleep in her bed, I see
a still life next to the kitchen sink: one white bowl
upside down, one fork, one knife, and beside the faucet
her unwashed drinking glass. Lifting the glass, I hope
to see her lipstick's usual pink wedge, scour for
a fingerprint, some smudge. I fill it half-full
with water, cover the rim with my lips,
turn it in a circle, slowly. This is how
I kiss my sister goodbye.

“Hell”
Sarah Manguso

The second-hardest thing I have to do is not be longing's slave.

Hell is that. Hell is that, others, having a job, and not having a job. Hell is thinking continually of those who were truly great.

Hell is the moment you realize that you were ignorant of the fact, when it was true, that you were not yet ruined by desire.

The kind of music I want to continue hearing after I am dead is the kind that makes me think I will be capable of hearing it then.

There is music in Hell. Wind of desolation! It blows past the egg-eyed statues. The canopic jars are full of secrets.

The wind blows through me. I open my mouth to speak.

I recite the list of people I have copulated with. It does not take long. I say the names of my imaginary children. I call out four-syllable words beginning with B. This is how I stay alive.

Beelzebub. Brachiosaur. Bubble-headed. I don't know how I stay alive. What I do know is that there is a light, far above us, that goes out when we die,

and that in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun. It reminds me of everything I failed at,

and I water it carefully. It is all I have to remind me of you.

"someone should write me a love poem but i'm stuck doing it myself"
Daphne Gottlieb

1. when i was in high school, i had to memorize the
conjugation of the latin verb "to love."

2. i have no idea what happened to my mother's wedding
ring. last night at 12:17 am, i really needed to know.

3. "beautiful" and "amazing" just mean "beautiful" and
"amazing." nothing more.

4. i memorized the latin verb by singing the forms to the
tune of "the mexican hat dance":

amo
amas
amat

amamus
amatis
amant

5. someone called at 1:19 in the morning. the area code is
from somewhere in arizona. i don't think i know anyone
in arizona. there wasn't a message.

6. if someone lets you sleep over and has to go to work while
you're still asleep and they let you sleep in even though though
they don't really know you, it's nice to leave a thank you
note. or make their bed.

7. i haven't been beautiful in days and i need more sleep.
don't think about it too much. it doesn't mean a thing.

8. i have had my shirts altered so i can wear my heart on my
sleeve.

9. told me i'm beautiful and amazing and where are you,
who told me i'm beautiful and amazing, next time please
write it down, i will be beautiful all day after i make the
bed, amazing after i throw the latex away; how is it, the
everywhere of our hands and no trace of handwriting
anywhere

10. i still sing:

amo
amas
amat

amamus
amatis
amant

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

--
-

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is it because the hour is late
the dove sounds new,

no longer asking
a path to its father's house,
no longer begging shoes of its mother?

or is it because i can't tell departure
from arrival, the host from the guest,

the one who waits expectant at the window
from the one who, even now, tramples the dew?

i can't tell what my father said about the sea
we crossed together
from the sea itself,

or the rose's noon from my mother
crying on the stairs, lost
between a country and a country.

everywhere is home to the rain.
the hours themselves, where do they hide?
the fruit of listening, what's that?

are the days the offspring of distracted hands?
does waiting that grows out of waiting
grow lighter? what does my death weigh?
what's earlier, thirst or shade?
is all light late, the echo to some prior bell?

is it because i'm tired that i don't know?
or is it because i'm dying?
when will i be born? am i the flower,
wide awake inside the falling fruit?
or a man waiting for a woman
asleep behind a door?
what if a word unlocks
room after room the days
wait inside? still,

night amasses a foreground
current to my window.
listen. whose footsteps are those
hurrying toward beginning?

we are not birds

this beautiful speed will be the end of us.
those are stars in our teeth.

Once, I knew a man who liked to talk to me
Among the things he said was, “The problem
with writing in the first person is that you
always end up with a confessional, and sooner
or later, you’re going to get sick of listening
to your own stories.” This was in the era of
typewriters and pre-war apartment buildings,
but the human condition was the same
as it is now, at least in my neighborhood:
we were all selfish and preoccupied with
our own appearance (especially the length
and texture of our hair), and we spent
too much time thinking about Who am I,
really, and what do I really want?

And though I may have made up
that conversation, as well as placed it
in the past, you will still recognize
this list of things, few as they are,
that we were interested in back then,
besides ourselves: Celebrity divorces
Baseball scores. When the health food store
was going to get in those Hawaiian
coffee beans that we were willing to
pay extra for. How much the rent
was going to go up next year

Now here is something else he said to me,
the man I alluded to above. And he said it
in a firm voice: “The problem with trying
to gauge anything about the future by conditions
in the present, or conversely, trying to learn
anything from the past, is that we are all idiots”
He had a beard and wore glasses, this particular
man, and he drank all day. Soave Bolla
Sometimes, he kept the bottles and made them
into lamps. I don’t know if it was a good idea
to drink so much and then fool around with
electricity, but if something had happened,
I imagine he would have just written it into a story,
in the first person. He was a complainer, this guy,
but at least he worked. He worked all the time

So why am I going into all this now? Because
I have a story to tell—in the first person—and
it needs some context. Here goes: Last night,
when I got on the subway, I jostled a woman holding
a copy of X. When she complained, instead of
hitting her with my shoe, which would have
once been my modus operandi, I heard myself
suggest that somebody reading such an interesting
book could have been expected to be a little more
philosophical about things that happen on a
rainy night in a crowded city. And then—though
it has taken me longer than it should have
to understand that sometimes people say one thing
and mean another—I went home, turned on my lamp,
and with an idiot’s enthusiasm, began my work.

The only place a woman can go to be alone
is the bathroom.
A woman would like to be wrapped in strong arms
when she cries, without having to explain,
or huddle on the couch wrapped in a blanket and a cat.
But all over America, women crouch instead
on a white, cold monument to wasting water.
We lean against a chilled tile wall,
stare at ourselves in an icy mirror,
flush the toilet to cover howls and curses,
brush our teeth twice to cover the taste of anger.
We lock the door, fill the tub with hot bubbles,
take a long time shaving our legs and armpits,
study the way waves break over bulging stomachs.
We scour the sink and rearrange the bottles under it,
refold towels, throw away old prescriptions,
count bandaids and bottles of suntan lotion.
We turn out the lights, stare into candle flames,
light incense, try to pretend we’ve taken our troubles
to a glowing temple, placed them in the lap
of a smiling golden Goddess.
Outside, men who wouldn't know what to do
if a woman curled up in bed and cried
can relax before bloodless images on TV
and think, "She's only in the bathroom
doing some woman's thing."
Behind a locked door, a woman
spins the empty toilet paper roll
like a Tibetan prayer wheel,
chanting "Help me, help me, help me."


From here.

With no sides, I come face to face with the reproductive anxiety
later, it is known to me as the productive anxiety producing aches
I feel achey, the swollen eyelid matching the swollen moth heads
left me feeling like the chief proponent of redundancy: as in
but you said yes but you said yes but you said yes but you said yes
or: I love you son I love you my one and only son I love you
my offspring I love you person made in my own image I love you
fetus inside me who grew up to be a beautiful young man I love you
surly thing who never smiles I love you angry young boy who lacks
compassion I love you my boy and your ability to say I hate you bad.
Suddenly the apostle who befriended me was affixed to a doorbell
and the ringing was proof of my mother’s tergiversation: she gave up
my father’s wealth and created a new starvation in the western lands
that were newly zoned for the gluttons who were my friends in college
their funds were small and mostly hidden, when they encountered
dry mouth they wept in pain but they looked clownish with their – O –
mouths and arid faces. Cry! I told them. Cry horribly! I instructed.
It will be good to calm down. It will be good to forget the oneiric
tragedy which asks us to worry about the afterlife—here I am
as shaken as the bits of gravel that came to us from Asia. Here I am
afraid, convincing others to be the same and the self-same
guilt is as ugly as the imagination that created me, created you,
created my fear of you and my wanting of you, my fear of
wanting you to cease to exist or to go on. I am too afraid
to be found out, our birthplace changed too much, so what
if I wanted to be changed, so what if I depend on summary
and quotation? I saw pickled lambs and the small horned creatures
fighting the insects who carried my grandfather to his tomb
while the rest of the city departed, the gulf was created by the embalmed
evacuation. I stand over the seas now, minor as a natural hairline
discovered suddenly after a shower, the pitiful waning:
I plan to march to the seas, I plan to make more plans,
the megrims of a carefully recorded life, I will save these pages—
Don’t forget me, I languish between the knots and you stay furrowed.

We wear her in front, just so she can fall,
her senses dead, her fingers stuck on the door.
We watch her drop, never to pick her up,
her heart broken, her feet glued to the floor.

But once in time, there was a girl
who wore a dress and a bow and a grin
and took pictures to strangers with an empty box
just so she could listen to the music in the waves
in the air where she floated away.

Once in time, there was a girl
who wore a ring and a boy and a time
and left it all drop so she could stand in mid-air
and dance to the waves of the sound
of the silenced heart that let her down.

We wear her in front, just so we can live
without the fear of having to feel whatever she does;
We watch her drop, and we stand very still
so we can mention the hurting that could never stop.

But once in time, there was a girl
who wore a dream and a colour and drew trees on the walls,
and took pride in a smile and took fear to a box
and put it away, letting it stay, left with a key
too easy to break, to easy to slip away.

And while she walks barefeet on the glass
of the broken bell jar, I'm sure she never looks back
to see it from afar, a girl that once wore a bow and a dress,
a girl that once loved and climbed up tall towers
to see the city lights, just 'cause she could.

Once in time, there was a girl
standing on a station, and a shadow laid on the floor;
I never knew she would fall, I never know she'd stay
to see the broken pieces once again get swept away
by that feeling that got locked in a box, that day.

And she tried to dance it away,
she tried to put on a dress and go and escape
but the hurting never stops, not once since the day
the girl with the box became the girl in the mine
singing the canary song to let them know they could stay.

this is the part where you wander drunk into the darkening woods and they don't find you face-down in the river for three days because you drift six miles downstream. your limbs are bone-white and split with bloat. the fish have made a mess of you. the boys who snagged and fished you up never dreamed of you. now you're with them every night. you sit at their beds' dark feet, emptying your boots of it, the riverwater, the sand, your soul. 'it's worth it,' you tell them, 'becoming the river.' you feel benevolent, returning to them, making them part of something infinite. you can't imagine their loathing. 'to taste the language of fish,' you whisper. 'to know it means you are a part of something, not just some thing.' they don't answer, but you know they hear, under their lids, their eyes dart like trapped things. out beyond the trees a beaver strikes the river with its tail, clear and loud as a gun shot.

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was—
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.

Sometimes I overhear and sometimes I underhear.

Sometimes
you are thinking I am not here. Sometimes

I am more here than I’d like to be. Sometimes
protecting a reflection is like protecting yourself and washing your face sometimes

in a mirror long broken. It’s a day to be remembered. Did you sin
and dream of confessing? Did you confess and dream of sinning
or of refraining

again and again and again?

Here we go again. Fix my hair,
let’s see if the dogs want to go for a walk.

They hanged him, I said dismissively
having no other way to say he died
or that he was a dear friend
or that work wove us most intimately
in common tasks, ambitions, desires.
Now he is dead: and I dare not think
of the anguish that drove him to where he was
or the pain at their hands he must have faced
or how much he was racked by my distress:
now, it is still easiest to say, they hanged him,
dismissively.