Rather than transcribing lived experience directly, I choose to make strange the almost-familiar. Why? Because we also need the ineffable.
I have been swinging between poles of gratitude and forlorn-ness. What a strange word, old-fashioned, and yet forlorn with its rhyme with torn and lostness is the word that comes to mind. Little Bo Peep was forlorn. America is her.
I stay between get and grief. Radiance
is a dream I had of light. Even now
the days are shaving themselves down, thinner
and thinner, a prepubescent autumn…
I am hoping I can deliver this monster without killing the mother.
before today was yesterday and yesterday was good. tomorrow could be excellent. today there is cabbage soup and a box of holiday to toss around the house like eyelash thread instead of tinsel.
A dunking worthy of a new baptismal sect.
“Every time you name yourself, you name someone else.”
― Bertolt Brecht
