RUTH DAIGON
we made a party
for everyone we knew
and those we never knew
drank new wine
ate fruit
out of season
and sat on the ground
the smell of damp
rising rich between our knees
and remembered
everything we'd done
or imagined
told stories of a woman
who wore her flesh
like armor
of a child who
swallowed its reflection
in the mirror
of a man
whose clothes
smelled like travel
we talked
to the sound
of baroque violins
walked into rooms
our heads
sprouting ornaments
and later
went back to doing
what we always do
It's as if the dark, which had before just been context, gave to vulnerability a permission, almost: fleshy saucers of spilled cream, so many parchment fists, unfisting; and now, in pieces, the delicate mask of an indifference offered radically up against what, each time, seems as unthinkable, as unexpected, as when, in the long dream of retraction, that sea that is finally not a sea, but what else to call it, begins again its shifting, and though to every push of the will forward there's something noble—which is to say, something lonely, also—it's too late. Carl Phillips Speak Low Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Comments
Post a Comment