91 (Vera Pavlova)
dropped
and falling
from such
heights
for so
long
that
maybe
I will have
enough time
to learn
flying
It’s time to give up the search for the invisible.
On the best of days there’s little more
than the fainest intimations. The millennium,
my dear, is sure to disappoint us.
I think I’ll keep on describing things
to ensure that they really happened.
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
(e.e. cummings)
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
today is tuesday; email me on saturday
the secret of life is decisiveness
and to describe something
i see the distance and move immediately into it
now i am really alone
from here i know these things: that a hamster is a lonely fist
that my poems exist to dispel irrational angers, that i want to hold your face
with my face
like a hand
the secret of life is that i miss you, and this describes life
tonight my heart feels shiny and calm as a soft wet star
i describe it from a distance, then move quickly away
-Tao Lin
Superbly Situated
Superbly Situated
BY ROBERT HERSHON
you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things
i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed
and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed
how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you
part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses
just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them
but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat
we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve
I want to get up early one morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the strait from every
seafaring country in the world -
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat the plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them taking a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy - I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.
