June - Poem 13
Limbo / Kristina Byas
It’s the holding on to things that have already let us go that almost kills us,
and
hope is enough to let it.
The People Manual / Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson
On first read, I got bogged down
on Chapter 2, Eye Contact: When peopling,
do not avert your eyes. Do not stare
at your hands. Do not sigh and look
longingly at the floor. I wanted to be
a good person, but gazes were too much
—admiring gazes, hateful gazes, sly gazes,
gazes I couldn’t quite make out.
Gazes made me want to crawl inside myself
and build a nest. Gazes made me question
myself, made me want to hide. I wanted eyes
that worked. The manual said eyes
are how you make friends, how you connect
with others, how you show confidence.
I wanted to do it right, but I was peopling
all wrong. I turned to the chapter on
troubleshooting: What to do if you can’t people
the way other people people? There were no
directions to reboot. No way to start over.
Just a list of possible people to blame: mother,
father, third-grade teacher, brother, sister,
ex-boyfriend. See Appendix iv for more direction:
If all else fails, you can blame yourself,
which is all really you want anyway.
musique concrète of grief / Jess Tønseth Lee Gleason
Loop 1
Bryan Adams’s “Summer of ‘69” off the radio
looped back & forth, rewind & repeat
I hear the ghost of you –
James Bond movies recorded from TBS, here
your face merges in all incarnations looking nothing,
yet everything, like them –
Beatles vinyls, sun-warped, rivering half voices
too fast, too slow, whiskering the needle across
grooves, recycling the grays of your face –
Eared in all these books, barked
in all the doggedness, like your stubborn
sidehauling arms pushing everything off the shelf –
In this one lonely Betamax
all the fuck alone in my basement
with no idea how I got it.
Loop 2
off the radio
looped back &
I hear
movies recorded
in all incarnations
like them
riveting half
too slow
grays of your face
in all these
your stubborn
arms pushing
this one
alone in
idea
Loop 3
off
&
hear
recorded
incarnations
like
riveting
slow
grays
all
your
pushing
one
alone
Loop 4
hear
recorded
slow
all
alone
SHOULDER / Shane Moran
Sangria out of a four-liter jug with a friend (I knew was crushing on me)
Had become a choice of lessons : how to let a dear one down easy,
Or why not give what their mouth asked for—I had
Understood men to take sex despite degrees of desire. Was I not
Lucky to be chosen to’ve earned by existing? I fucked her,
Distractedly. Matching my stroke to the streetlight's flicker, my mind was
Elsewhere. I soon went soft. Embarrassed, I rallied and rushed.
Rough, too rough, she told a friend, who told me I’d lost my friend.
Post-War / Jingyu Li
By Bei Dao, trans. Jingyu Li
Images distilled from dreams
drop their flags at the sky’s edge
The pond has become bright,
the laughter of those missing
makes clear: pain
is a lotus flower’s shout
Our silence
turns into wood pulp turns
into paper, the winter that healed
our writing wounds
TBR/RIP / Stefanie Zito
Sometimes I think about death too much
Maybe it’s a good thing to ponder
To note one's impermanent
And fleeting nature
And how I’m among the “this”
Which too shall pass.
Well, I’ve decided how I’d like to go:
Under the crushing weight of
My ever growing stacks of books.
After all, as it turns out
Curiosity is a chronic condition
And mine seems particularly terminal.
I don’t know which will drain first
My bank account or my days for reading.
Hopefully the former
And hopefully not for a while.
But instead of pulling the plug on me
Please note, my preference:
A solid smothering of my TBR tower.
