Saturday, August 30, 2008

I'm supposed to submit poetry today. It's Saturday and that's the rule. I don't want to, too disspirited. Besides, I'm going to the train station at noon and that's all I'm going to say about that.

I submitted to Paris Review and they sent their rejection on an itty bitty piece of paper. Sheesh, they can't afford a whole piece or what, lots of scrap paper to get rid of? At least Handsome Journal sent a whole piece handwritten with beautiful handwriting. I put it up over my computer with Kelly's poem. Kelly's poem is called Boxtalk and I missed the workshop she brought it to. She sent it to me and so I encountered it straight on, noone reading it to me. I wish I could publish it here. It is so brilliant and shivery and brutal. I still use it for inspiration.

*

If we are to build the future from fireflies
Start with mortality
Or morality, you choose one or the other
Not both, my heart

Find yourself on this compass
You are here, I am there
We meet in the middle, which
Houses a few cedars, an occasional cattail

An ocean in between, a tunnel through the ground
Sailing ships and candlesticks
Darkness random flavors
Cinnamon portabella lavender

Here, give me your hand
Or the body part you wish to relinquish
I have need of a familiar
For this turbulence

Shake a vessel barrels roll into the sea
Fish tangled and gutted
A mountain crashed down on us
Sharks, aluminum foil, cherry pits

What I mean to talk about is smothered
Pressed against your breastbone
With every breath you collapse into a levy
While I float tethered to the mast

Shipwreck, home to bottom feeders
Lions , butterfly bushes
All camphorated handkerchiefs
Your grandmother’s ghost perfumes the sheets

*

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah breaks my heart. Every time.

2 comments:

Radish King said...

It's not a rule, it's a challenge.

Maggie May said...

yes me too, every time.