-Hello?
-Is Margaret there?
-I'm sorry, who's calling?
-This is Liz.
-Liz?
-Uh-huh.
-Ummmmm... she hasn't been here in like three years? Can I ask what this is about?
-This is Liz.
-Yes.
-...
-...
-So. Can I talk with Margaret? This is Liz.
-Liz.
-Yes.
-...
-...
-So, she hasn't lived here in like three years? And this is my cell phone?
-Right.
-I have to say I'm baffled by this conversation.
-Right.
-Goodbye, Liz.
-Right. Right.
[click]
[Silence]
Here are a few poems I made a while back by taking words away from some writings far better than my own. My apologies.
ReplyDeleteFacing Open Space
( Erasure poem from the writings of Van Lewis )
Stand anyplace
block out noise for a minute
feel a best direction to face
we stand with backs to walls
facing open space
enter dark places
feel very small tugs
up, down, sunward, shadeward
respond as a planet
responds to a moon
everything has gravity
I walk down a passage
my hand dragging on the wall
I cook, I sit by a window
I reach for a book
I roughen the stone of the passage wall
I loosen my grip to fall away
leaving an artifact
accommodated to its site
worn shoes accommodate the wearer’s foot
every thing has its own gravity
a Japanese pot glazed pale green
on a rough Burmese sideboard
in front of an almost chartreuse wall-
setting an orange bag on the sideboard
the whole room found a new center
primates love an orange fruit
in the green canopy
It is good to be
at the edge of words
words a wall at my back
the space of not knowing
spread out before me.
When You Return
(Erasure poem from the writings of Kirk Wolf)
Codrescu has been at school speaking
wandering the halls waiting
lovely, patient, studiously sane-
language has much to do
with how you hold your body
understand every word
fail to answer the real question
understand very little, come right
by watching as they speak
Codrescu lives with ghosts speaking
languages from the wreckage
across borders
always darkness and light
we ate Afghan food the day after
more troops make more ghosts
the wine was Portuguese,
pleasantly viscous, Turkish coffee
About the poetic form listing the dead
invented by Ginsberg? the prophet Isaiah?
perhaps Death Itself?
people appeared, appear
for an incandescent moment
then were gone
are gone.
none of us let go of seeking refuge
parts of self are lost, replaced in flight
the school, full of stories
full of children of the diaspora
the half-remembered places
and languages they carry
a quiet, dark girl asked
when you return to Romania, do you feel alien?
dark hair across half her face
her eyes moving tentatively
between Codrescu's eyes and her own folded hands
he began to answer her in Romanian
she spoke back in Romanian
I hadn't known
it was her mouth when she talked, he said.
Thanks, sweet forever. If I'd known I'd be quoted...
ReplyDeleteNan, your poems are lovely and evocative.
ReplyDelete