FEB 2021
ntozoke shange in poetry in motion, the rising, rising women-chorus, the joy that without even trying harvests a history out of singing, the grand addition of people who come together in knowing
lemon, saffron, brown edges of rice
lap-see lam’s “mother’s tongue” and the way it fractures in turn the implications of technology upon memory, the impresses of mentality upon physicality, and the nature of storytelling to paint colours on which in the mind there is only monochrome
walking home in the morning to moon-signs
the leaving of the manuscript
“one life pours and grows impatient
for another life”
frank stanford and his strange and different country of loving
the plural and oscillating facades of sea and the questions it draws out of the faces of people as they are or are not at its mercy, as captured by vittorio de seta in islands of fire
very nice wines drank then forgotten
nadine byrne’s delicate fracturing of colour, negative space, and occurrences of the mind upon traversing in her “echoes” series
sylphs of branches red-heavy in berry
“like apples were for cézanne.”
the sky serrated on a wednesday, interfering structures, lights, clouds, making about as much sense as a body
red flakes of chili browning in the pan referencing the slow evenings of mama making dinner
“between the elapse of years, the days light and lighter hold on to existing”
the act of cooking for the people you love, its ancient underlines throughout the legacy of human affections
jean valentine on valentine’s day (thinking it was valentine’s day one day premature and going through the whole day in its daze)
the first page of rimbaud’s phrases in their original french
reciprocation as the foundation of love
wearing yellow on a grey day and then the sun’s precipitous appearance
translating liu xi sending me back to the doors
delicate, clumsy, enduring love
“always the clock, always the corridor, always the staircase, because I wanted to show that nothing changes except the emotions of these two people.”
translating lan lan’s poems and allowing the course of their restrained, almost platitudinous exquisiteness move into and occupy shyly their new language
“so sit back and watch the sun show
how the soul glow
how black can still be gold and boastful”
putting copies of the city answers loudly into crisp white envelopes which will travel through the dust of continents and then arrive in the homes of people I love
making the woman behind the plastic barricade roll her eyes and laugh
reading christina rossetti out loud and feeling the tripping tickle of her ornate lyricism rattle between the teeth
yasuhiro’s poem for the architectural planes of a house which will surely be the site of construction many more poems to come
revisiting the wondrously split-ended, endlessly variegating, fit of disbelief that was lawrence ferlinghetti’s tremendous life in writing across the landscape
sarah polley’s gentle urging of her father in stories we tell
translating and really feeling it, the incantations of it, the morphing conjugations of ideographs into the english language
pulling spring and all off the shelf (the blazing secrecy of noon is undone / and and and / the broken sand is the sound of love—)
