From “Daybook”
let’s start there. let’s start there. (3 /9
new oddcouple friendship
raised many eyebrows
one thing he doesn’t want
“I come in peace
and basketball
some hungover blue blue
a doe-eyed girl, I was
trying to tell you a simple story
did you want me back
on Celebrity Apprentice
yes yes yes yes
a real human being
who let his guard down
((he’s not his dad
I’m sleeping in your bed
while you sleep smothered
in stars, a foreign city
not the dirtbag
you fight to shrug off inside
he says that
he don’t want war
doesn’t want to touch
this tattooed body
sheltered in a solar cave
what the cuban missile crisis was for the us (3 /10
do my best across
two thousand miles
to “seem very close and “very real
constantly having shrugged off
this new sense of vulnerability
like seeing Peggy at nineteen weeks
((womanly, growing growing
each day we don’t talk
I fail to matter, the sky
breaches some tense standstill
even small miscalculations
die deep in the earth,
(whose womb ((unburnt
what in the world between us
could start again
that negative sun
could quickly inflame
another way of saying
dew point hoarfrost,
white tendrils cast
nuclear winter keeps trying
to speak to me
didn’t answer two calls
//
((quickly ((quickly pull together
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just one accidental step (3 /11
| severs the hotline |
if this amounts to speculation (3 /15
the new dear leader fends off assassins
while I’m in my 9th cup of tears
the world / disaster of misunderstood longings
((strange duration
“strikingly similar effacement in
prewar Chinese and Japanese cartography
he’s something quite remarkable
strong, conniving, poised to appear
on a global stage
“‘virtual nonentity,’ a mere region —
“whose ‘natural’ function was to serve
am I capable
touching his eyelid, chin, upper lip
where the tooth went through
and there
of riding a hysterical horse into the sea
did you feel safe? cared after?
I was in the villages then.
it’s hard for me to say.
(uncertain, unsteady, unsure —
in just one year to float
my skin softened strange, did I
know where I was who
southeast northwest // southwest northeast
in just one year the same sun
moves from one place to another
the heart’s entrails abandoned, too
brightness)
given its almost certain destruction, (3 /16
snow announces no spring
no faith left in me , disregards
((such impenetrable weather
phosphorescent bug
“Let the American imperialists and
their followers know!” the paper said.
“We are not a pushover like Iraq or Libya.”
a human region, not a geophysical one
draws a mark
to make a horizon, if
only to see you again
pleasure in making the international community jumpy
no boundary
no home
no disaster
no dilemma
| Patriot
TPY-2
Arleigh-Burke
Aegis |
밥 먹었어? |
to have crossed new and dangerous lines
my side aches, how it all speaks to me
vague clouds inside a name
can my attention deliver it
what harm in reaching out from
a network branching underground
more tremors, a biting pain
another day
to “encircle” and contain (3 /18
five days, no sky appears
unease
latest successful test of
unspoken boundaries
furthers silence,
disfigures my attention
toward fabric softener,
artificial sweeteners, black
mold sweeping the hallways
where
I have to stand seven hours a day
I want to be known to you
the world over
not cordoned off thrown
((orange pits on the floor
Source: Poetry (July/August 2017)