I divide my time between the NewYork in my mind and a cow-sprouted field, divide my rightear from my left, though the leftreceives god-like frequencies onlymy poodle can hear. I divide myliver from my brain when I swillwine and smoke. Divide my sunnydisposition from the sun it neverowned. Divide my body frommy bed, home from…
There was a poisoning.Perhaps from the reincarnation ages ago where your hands curled and stitchedthe fake flower bouquets of 1860, dusted them with Scheele’s green,the arsenic powder breathed into your child lungs. Or maybe before that,like Napoleon, copper sulfate from a papered bedroom settled like a secretinto your waistcoat and gloves. Centuries have passed since…
Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing When I pass through the years, my younger selfno longer awaits me. He has ridden away on a horse,farther and farther, raising a cloud of dust, and finally gone.I have to look for him in a mirror, and see thisslowly aging face that has gradually become strange….
Then, I will be a person who knows ferns—who has tramped the woods for miles to tell youabout glacial egg-shaped boulders mattedwith which kind of fern, and then, forty miles south,that the same kind of fern, the Walking Fern,is still vibrant (though less bosky) on northernslopes, in lime sand, and I will be a hat-wearing,walking-stick-carrying…
I’ve stood in the shape of myself, became well-meaning, started letters with dear. I taught paper to fly, heard animals hide themselves in me, like sex inside houses, like centuries inside histories. A bearded man, who pretended to be a philosopher, a fatalist even, came to me, set a circle before me and said nothing that…
Translated from the Arabic by Abdelrahman ElGendy So-and-so brushedmy shoulder as gunshotscracked. So-and-so: I never learnedhis name, so I called himcousin, and that wasenough. So-and-so, who sharedhis last bite as hungerfissured my song. So-and-so, a blurwho saw you safelythrough the square. So-and-so, who frisked mewith a grin, asked,“Is he reallystepping down?” So-and-so who told…
I am ready to have less of loss—a thought that comes to me now that I’m used to having lossall around, shows up as I walk past the freshly cut field near the spotwhere my mother-in-law broke both her ankles, bleeding heartsstubborn on the terrace. Some want the poem to come for themfrom the sky…
a tangle of wings and abdomens slappingthe windowpane. My first instinct was to annihilate them. My next instinctto pamper them, to lay out a buffet of egg-enticing garbage, the shriveledstrawberries languishing in the fridge put to use at last. I wanted to learnto regard the divine not with ambivalence, but the insouciance of my dog’sgroggy…
“How much are you willing to sacrifice?”the spandex-suited antagonist asksin the movie I have decided to rentalmost without thought, it being Friday, late,my wife’s body sprawled impressivelyacross the couch so that I decide, finally,to sit slouched on the floor beneathmy pile of blankets, but now, in the dark,my nose close to the screen, the villainspeaking…
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