pulling on my mask
as my nom de plume
unbuttons her blouse again
Posts Tagged ‘ars poetica’
One Impasse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, paradox, poem, poetry, vulnerability, writing on September 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Anna Akhmatova Remembers Paris, 1911
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anna akhmatova, ars poetica, love, modigliani, poem, poetry on April 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »
When I met Amadeo Modigliani,
I knew of hunger
what did I know of love?
I was in Paris. On my honeymoon.
As my new husband met with other women
i met with Amadeo, an impoverished Italian Jew.
His paintings not yet famous.
We would walk Parisian streets
in the warm summer rain
and snuggle under his black umbrella
and recite by heart poems from Verlaine together.
He begged me, don’t go back to Russia.
Russia? I said, where is that? It’s Russiya.
Don’t go back to Russiya, Anna.
I did.
That winter he wrote me in Petrograd:
Vous êtes en moi comme une hantise;
You are obsessively part of me.
I knew it was true,
that he was more myself
than my own familiar hands.
Back in Petrograd,
I would touch my lips in the mirror
and say my own name
and believe my voice was his.
I think of Lot’s wife.
How they told her not to turn,
to not look at Sodom, her home
even as it was being destroyed
but how could she not
turn to the green fields where she had sung,
turn to the bed where her children
were made, turn to the place
of her blood?
When I turned back to Paris
because his love felt like home
even though i knew it would be destroyed,
I was not transformed into salt
but into chalk, black chalk, his chalk on paper.
I did not know then
how that I would come
to treasure his vision,
how I would tape his drawing
on the wall in every house
i ever lived in so I could live again
between those lines in a time
of wild honey, scent of beeswax candles,
his amber eyes.
Amedeo always drew me naked
in long spare lines—
Always from memory when he was alone.
With me, his hands
were too busy for chalk.
He’d slip off my dress,
and in my breast,
he’d visit my beloved Russian steppes,
in my waist, he buried himself
in Siberian snow,
and between my thighs,
he was baptized again and again
in the floodwaters of the Neva River.
They’d not yet made
a corset that will fit me—
how could it when I
am all of Russia?
Oh I loved him. Wrote him poems.
Left red roses strewn on his studio floor.
How airy the light was then.
How I loved being what they would later call me,
polovina monakhini, half nun,
polovina shlyukha, half whore.
Damn Thirsty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, darjeeling, poem, poetry, tea, thirst on December 7, 2017| 2 Comments »
Scent of Darjeeling
escapes through
the poem’s cup—
from miles away
you smell it,
twist of citrus,
muscatel—
try telling your thirst
it’s just words,
the delicate
flowering in the air,
the warmth
of the cup,
the fruit
making merry
on your tongue.
One Because
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry on November 28, 2016| 1 Comment »
Sometimes
nothing
happens
still we arrive
to be wrestled
by a poem
sometimes
what emerges
has wings.
Glacier Lake, Unruled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, glacier lake, poem, poetry, skinny dipping on October 27, 2016| 3 Comments »
I could tell you it doesn’t hurt, but
that’s a lie. Still, I choose
to dive into what’s frozen,
entering the cold with no armor.
Naked and alone. I could tell you
I want you to join me,
and that is partially true.
After the shock, the shudder,
the clench, we can stretch
our limbs on a warm flat rock
and let the sun write its blushing graffiti
across our skin.
It is not our toughness
that will save us here, but
our curiosity.
Let us not come for answers,
and if we find some, let’s not
fill our pockets. Let’s toss them
like stones into the lake,
and let’s not dive in after them
no matter how strong we are,
no matter how deep
the water, no matter
how clear.
Into the Poem I Tuck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, poem, poetry on September 13, 2016| 1 Comment »
a left turn,
a river stone,
straw,
the moon,
an empty frame,
the scent of books,
a wide-brimmed hat,
a question mark,
ripe peach juice, maps
to nowhere,
unfinished songs,
a trunk, blue mornings,
fields of gold,
uncertainty
of what comes next,
the promise
I will try
again.
One Unfathomable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, love, poem, poetry on September 6, 2016| 1 Comment »
Muse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, cat, muse, poem, poetry on August 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
Muse
It’s like the absence
where the cat used to come
and rub against your leg
and you had some hope
there was real affection,
perhaps she even favored you,
you were, after all,
the one who fed her—
no wonder she nuzzled your shins—
but that was before you tried
to pick her up and rub
her belly. Eager fool.
It was days before the cat
let herself be seen again,
though you set out cream,
though you promised loudly
not to pick her up.
God, just to feel her
rub against your leg.
That would be enough, you
tell yourself, but you
and the cat both know you’ll try
to pick her up again, your hands
desperate as a blank page.
It Was Years Before I Could Say Thank You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, expectation vs. reality, gift, gift horse, poem, poetry on September 21, 2015| 1 Comment »
But you got it all wrong,
I wanted to say to that gift horse.
You brought me what,
stubbornness, devotion and persistence?
What kind of gifts are those?
I wanted to be a poet.
The gift horse reared and ran off,
leaving me with a thousand thousand poems
to read, a pen that will never run out,
and a whole lifetime of blank pages
just waiting to be written.
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