10 poems // June 10
the mere presence changes everything (happy pride)
1 //
X // by Dionne Brand
Then it is this simple. I felt the unordinary romance of
women who love women for the first time. It burst in
my mouth. Someone said this is your first lover, you
will never want to leave her. I had it in mind that I
would be an old woman with you. But perhaps I
always had it in mind simply to be an old woman,
then, I decided it was you when you found me in that
apartment drinking whisky for breakfast. When I came
back from Grenada and went crazy for two years, that
time when I could hear anything and my skin was
flaming like a nerve and the walls were like paper
and my eyes could not close. I suddenly sensed you
at the end of my room waiting. I saw your back arched
against this city we inhabit like guerillas, I brushed my
hand, conscious, against your soft belly, waking up.
2 //
Poem // by Frank O’Hara
Light clarity avocado salad in the morning
after all the terrible things I do how amazing it is
to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness
since what is done is done and forgiveness isn’t love
and love is love nothing can ever go wrong
though things can get irritating boring and dispensable
(in the imagination) but not really for love
though a block away you feel distant the mere presence
changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper
and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement
I am sure of nothing but this, intensified by breathing
3 //
Untitled // by Oscar d’Artois
if life ever gets
how it gets all u need is
sun & a river
to stand in & scream babe & every day i
bathe in my river like i
think i’m the goddamn
little mermaid, seems unfair
to the river what
about it does it have a
river to bathe in ?
4 //
Goatsong // by Leila Chatti
I will survive the wrong
I’ve done. All the love
that didn’t serve me.
My youth used up
worshiping mercurial
myopics. I’ve cried a lot
very briefly. This sorrow has helped
make my career. Yes,
I’m a difficult person
to endure, I hardly manage.
Oh hum, the rest of my life
keeps coming. It feels just
like I knew it would.
5 //
Grief Lessons // by Emily Skaja
No one stole your money.
No one stole your whole heart
then climbed into a stolen plane
and stole away into the night
to disappear entirely, stealing
darkness itself, then dawn.
What name would you even call
into the shadows between
here and gone, yours and no one’s,
what color could you give it,
this shade of something
slightly less than life?
Better to leave it whole.
Pure death—like an unmined diamond.
Keep the light of the fire
away from it—clean, untempered
by the tedious heat of language—
safe from your magpie, morbid way
of turning and turning
your pain in your hands
until you’ve crushed it to dust.
And anyway, who are you to say
I lost the world? No one. To admit
that you held the world at all?
6 //
Böhmen liegt am Meer // by Ingeborg Bachmann
If around here houses are green, I will again enter a house.
If bridges here are sound, I will walk on safe ground.
If the labor of love must be wasted in any era, here I will waste it gladly.
If it’s not me, it’s someone who could be me.
— —
Sind hierorts Häuser grün, tret ich noch in ein Haus.
Sind hier die Brücken heil, geh ich auf gutem Grund.
Ist Liebesmüh in alle Zeit verloren, verlier ich sie hier gern.
Bin ich's nicht, ist es einer, der ist so gut wie ich.
7 //
Alexa for Seniors in Easy Steps // by Alexis N. Garcia
Alexa turn off the lights, Alexa feed me the filament of my display, sloppy picked apart grammar, I don’t want a smart home, I don’t want to speed & smack the buzzer, Alexa my neural architecture is rlly cute, despite what you recited from the news, hot in my t-gel coded augmented data body ungovernable by algorithms, would you date my filtered avatar? would you eat my uncanny image?
Janelle Shane says that AI has the approximate brainpower of a worm, but worms know mud & the feeling of rain does being me mean anything? Professor Xavier never came 2 take me away, but I waited for water by the door of the soil w/ all 5 of my hearts & a part of me is still breathing mist
8 //
Como sombras de un tema musical // by Tilsa Otta, translated by Farid Matuk
Subí todo el brillo para poder besarte
Fue como hacerme gigante
Como si un conejo me hubiera dado un consejo
Lo hubiera seguido
Y hubiera caído en un agujero profundo
Algún orificio tuyo
Desde donde contemplo tu interior
Decorado con excelente gusto
Cuando regreso a casa el brillo es nulo
Como sombras de un tema musical
O también podría decirse
Que es de noche
Que nunca salí del espejo
Que la imaginación preceda siempre al conocimiento
— —
I turned up the brightness so I could kiss you
It was like going giant mode
Like a rabbit gave me advice
And I followed
And I would’ve fallen way down a deep hole
Some orifice of yours
Where I could study your insides
Decorated as they are with exquisite taste
Back home the shine is nulled
Just shades of a musical theme
Or it could also be said
That it’s night
That I never left the mirror
May imagination always come before knowing
9 //
We Could Get Drunk in This Field Because We’re in a Field & We’re in Love & What Else Would We Do? // by Nicholas Bon
I want to find the way through every tunnel -
us not ever stopping for gas, tires always
at proper pressure, this all awash in new
light. I want to shut this machine down
so we can grow tomatoes in its ugly chambers.
10 //
Birthday // by W.S. Merwin
