/23
The words were very hungry and, in turn, made the people who heard them hungry.
Some of the captivated audience would go for celebratory pizza and beer and talk utter bullshit;
others flew home in metal-boxes to their estranged spouses, disappointed children, mammoth TVs—
cyber blue light in the retinas too many hours of quotidian escape burned even in their half-dreams
[or, maybe] the pages of the Book would locate and drown them;
sentences dangling them over the edge-plateau Abyss. There were
metaphysical moments a few in the crowd wanted to talk about,
but the words ran right off the page—like a watercolor
on an incline leaving spider threads / maps. The dilapidated, lopsided mask-
constructions might banish the evil spirits back to their proverbial, macabre forests—
but We can no longer see the trees; stuck in being [pronouns].
A sign on the door signals the baby is, at last, sleeping.
The writing on the wall promised the war in someone else’s country would still be going on;
too many splintering teams, foreign interest / disinterest, complications of vested interests,
threats of terrorism / social media [de-]propaganda, [no breathtaking leadership]—
but what, in essence, should a concerned citizen do—make a phone call, send an email,
text the netherworld; tell them to come fetch some of the complicit / colluded crew?
Time should be carefully allotted before it accrues, fools you.
It’s silly to remove the lower pillars of the shifting construction,
but the heavy-metal soundtrack, replete with a chorus of electric guitars and five mammoth drum sets
made it all seem somewhat, temporarily bearable—
before the crumble-shuffle cumulative shock effects; how dizzying!
You really should un-knot the plush, golden rope for the disaffected cat; tired, she lounges
in the tall September grass; late lavender heather, Russian sage, burnt clover—
all the neighbors of the disenfranchised global neighborhood [almost everyone]–
hanging on by a spider’s thread. Saturday’s fifth gear will dissipate
exponentially by Monday, sigh.
It’s all esoteric philosophy [subjective sentences built out of private nomenclature] anyway, isn’t it?]
The cicadas will be even earlier tonight than the earlier earlier duskfall sky paintings, muted by cloud layers,
giving the illusion that all the pain is softer; light traveling farther away to be closer to
someone / something else.
Objects, adjectives, prepositions, and complicated ideas [the brain’s strange pictures edited by someone who went temporarily psychotic with the scissors and tape]
will be defined by what they are not.
July is not January; money is not water.
Not everything can be counted; not everything can be lost.
I hear whispers of catastrophe running through the lines; From public spectacle to domestic unease, language’s little desperate leapings …now, I’m haunted
such a beautiful, poetic, haunting comment! thank you, emily! god, i’d love this quotation to appear somewhere when the book comes out! thank you for reading me and for being so engaged and articulate about your experience of this section of my new book-poem! warmest regards, krysia
Whispers of catastrophe are running thru the lines of this one.
Now, I’m hauted
Each line is its own distinct unit of imagination without diminishing its flow from or connection to its surrounding lines. I admire the craft required to achieve this.
thank you so much, Yoshioka, for reading “iterations of summer /23” and for your comment that just made my afternoon! much appreciated! warmest regards, krysia
you are obvious a skilled writer to have composed such an articulate, eloquent pithy, perceptive comment. to reiterate, i so appreciate your “take”! i feel this penultimate section of book-poem has succeeded to do what i wanted it to do–move a reader who experiences the poem section on his/her own. extra extra points for expressing that here!
Hourglass Studies arrived in the post today and I smiled as I read the Rilke epigraph. I see now that every line here is a bit broken off of the world. Each line makes its own sense, but stacked up together they somehow create somewhere/something new.
Yoshioka, thank you so much for buying Hourglass Studies and for your lovely comment! Iterations of Summer has a sole epigraph also–from Wallace Stevens’ poem “Credences of Summer.” I look forward to reading you in my email in the next day or two! Many many thanks!