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First Daydream

Time “at a premium as usual” and me drunk in the garden the birds bearing their perfected frames down the creekbed walking as straight as I can I only intersect myself Even the gardeners are drunk today their rakes fly out of their hands they hide their bottle in the hedge their pile of petals…

Ideas

CHARLES and XENIA are discussing them At her place. Interrupted solitaire, Fern, teapot, humdrum harmonies from where Blinks a green cat’s-eye, the old FM. XENIA: Now no. But when I am child my parents Are receiving them. Emigrés I think very old, Distinguished. Spectacles with rims of gold. Clothes stained by acid of expérience. Forever…

Nail Letter

In the dark, I picked up a nail to write you a letter on a piece of wood. The iron point of midnight will failed me, I couldn’t send it. I am brave like Joan of Arc in dreams, but things shrink back into place when I awake. There are some tired flowers here with…

A Brief History of the Banana

     —for Ricardo Sternberg Shaped like a bureaucratic grin It floats Unseen Past the general’s head As he sits Studying an old newsreel of Peron’s exile. Even the palace guard Daydreaming About the young girl in the marketplace Thinks it only A phallics spectre Thrown up in the mind’s eye Like The curvaceous angel The boxer…

A Few Quotations

A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear…

On Tour with Rita

1. Georgia Black train flying north, Rita’s hat Awfully large and with a white ribbon, Legs crossed, cheap novel in her lap, Fingers casual on a bright necklace; Someone across the aisle is snapping Newspaper pages and blowing cigar smoke— This game of American spaces is tiresome: Trains may pound paradise into honeymoons And politics,…

excerpts from El Mono Gramático

[ Translator's note: What follows is a selection of passages from E1 Mono Gramatico (literally, "The Monkey Grammarian," but not to be taken literally: to be taken freely, calling up all the puns, associations, analogies that flood our minds when we juggle mono, mono, gram-, grammar, grammarian of monads, monkish keys, graminivorous appetite for semantics…

Primero de Enero

Las puertas del año se abren, como las del lenguaje, hacia lo desconocido. Anoche me dijiste:      mañana habrá que trazar unos signos, dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama sobre la doble página del papel y del día. Mañana habrá que inventar, de nuevo, la realidad de este mundo. Ya tarde abrí los ojos. Por el…

Just Stopping By

Who shares your room, I wish I knew. A centipede, with eyes of blue? She will not see me snooping here To count each slipper, boot and shoe. Our little dresser must think it queer To hold her panties pink and sheer. I’ll bet her ass will never quake The coldest evenings of the year….