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Thursday, August 21, 2014

"Edward Hopper's Seven A.M. (1948)" by John Hollander


The morning seems to have no light to spare
For these close, silent, neighboring, dark trees,
But too much brightness, in low-lying glare,
For middling truths, such as whose premises
These are, and why just here, and what we might
Expect to make of a shop-window shelf
Displaying last year's styles of dark and light?
Here at this moment, morning is most itself,
Before the geometric shadows, more
Substantial almost than what casts them, pale
Into whatever later light will be.
What happens here? What is the sort of store
Whose windows frame such generality?
Meaning is up for grabs, but not for sale.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

"The Fellowship" by Lydia Davis

1.

It is not that you are not qualified to receive the fellowship, it is that each year your application is not good enough. When at last your application is perfect, then you will receive the fellowship.

2.

It is not that you are not qualified to receive the fellowship, it is that your patience must be tested first. Each year, you are patient, but not patient enough. When you have truly learned what it is to be patient, so much so that you forget all about the fellowship, then you will receive the fellowship.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

"In Sky" by Susan Wheeler

The girl is waiting in the room to be discovered.
The girl is attempting radiance.
The girl may be a boy, or vice versa.
The girl is anticipating the man's arrival, later.
The girl is anticipating the man's displeasure.
The girl is anticipating the man's disapproval.
The girl takes no guff.
The girl's mendacity has long been remarked upon.
The girl armors up with chic.
The girl carries the blooms, the veronicas, the perovskia.
The girl who may be a boy powders the smalt.

The girl fills the room like smoke.
The girl is a deer in the onrush of lamps, she sits on the planks of the pier.
The girl swings her feet above the surface of the water.

The girl presses out, inhales, still fills her seat not.
The seat is an ink room, not-girl, apprehension.
The girl is mottled with self, with indecision.
The girl's amethyst earrings window her eyes.
The girl twirls her cape before the bull.
She refuses her chest.
She refuses "alabaster."
She refuses your volupty at her expense.

The girl is the hole, the cutout.
The box she is punched from throngs with blue spirits.
The ground is blank as a plum, tank-deep.
O water, o silting of dust. Reticulate.
The room's tonnage sags.
The ground is figure to its own ground.
And she, blade of grass at the Battle at Troy.

The girl refuses the stadium seating.
The girl mixes lazule and vivianite.
The girl was or was not a mother, this is irrelevant.
The girl's skin shelters; her skin burns with self.
At the end of the pier, in the house light, she looks up.
Her shade engulfs her.
The girl's blueism offputs the man.

The Girl look't Blew. Blue funked. Cast indigo.
She yelled bloody blue, she talked a blue streak.
The girl blued her bluebacks on linnets and blue duns.
The girl was waiting to be overtaken.
The girl was cruising for a bruiser.
The girl tilted up at the ciel: blue-domer.
She struck into space like a bolt from the blue.
Azul ultramarino, when I confessed I repented, the girl said.
She was blue mouldy for the want of that drink.

The girl ardent was; ardent, wracked, and replete.
The girl took the retablo from the wall; in her hand its wings shone.
The girl watched, as she listened, the strung lights waver.
The girl's moment for radiance passed.
O she was stippled, O but her room was.
O that the treatment take hold and transform.

The girl swung a gun.
The girl jutted her chin fore.
The girl limped with her sidling and stalled.
She has a fast one, it's in a wheel rut, the girl and her blue ruin, gin and her car.
The girl has veined shoulders.
She passes wind.

The girl's form is landmined: flounces, the flesh.
The girl bats the red lock away from her ear.
The girl takes the synapse and invests it with scene (insensible sense).
The girl Rapunzel is (NOT). She disdains.

O discrete make me and blocked.
O scurry me forth on the slate patio, and applaud my every squeak.
O I am helpful like a shill (no groin).
Untransmutable plane with your shadowed door.
The room heats like a vise.

The girl splices the water like a seal or a grouper.
The girl's shell grows a rubbery skin.
The girl looks right back, planted.

The girl holds her thumb piano beneath our view.

She, the girl, regards the chimpanzee.
The chamber loses its ceiling and the stars prick through.

The girl breathes. Her sex bucks out of sight.

The girl, blushing: O did you see me there? Did you?

Friday, August 1, 2014

"may be you are like me: scared and awake" by Olena Kalytiak Davis

A wreath of violets lain where my brain used to be,
   Matutinal,
Frantic. The usual. Scalded and cold. I descend. I work like a
   bird.
I hear spring coming from a long mile off. A distant jungle-
   meadow.
It comes, it sings. Says: To be heard you must be let, be in. To
   be heard
It is best to hum, like water. It's true, I am barnacled and
   black. The un-
Deadly, the sternum, the prow.

                                   Was, I used to confess the nuns.
Was, the prettier they were, the less they said. Week after week
   whispered
The one I loved like a secret: "I must avow. I'm of that type
   that's mostly
Hype." I let Him forgive her merely on the strength of her
   brow. Sister,
Says I, I wear it like a wife. Then I'd go wash my hands in mint
   and rose.
May be, you are all like me: all pose.

                                    May be, you are cutting each word harder
And harder, to listen, I'mall watchandwile,waitingtobe Called.
   Lordy-lordy-lordy.
When I asked to be left alone, I didn't mean, like, now, like,
   this. Full-deep:
All solace and solecism. Un-sail-able. Un-vale-able. To spring,
   to light, to sleep.