loosejournal

[loosejournal]

“Where can we live but days?” —Philip Larkin

[loosejournal]

Each time I work on a novel, I endure the questions, I live inside them. When I reach the end of these questions—which is not the same as when I find answers to them—is when I reach the end of the writing process. By then, I am no longer as I was when I began, and from that changed state, I start again. The next questions follow, like links in a chain, or like dominoes, overlapping and joining and continuing, and I am moved to write something new.

—Han Kang, Nobel lecture, 2024

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Dedication by Franz Wright

It’s true I never write, but I would gladly die with you. Gladly lower myself down alone with you into the enormous mouth that waits, beyond youth, beyond every instant of ecstasy, remember: before battle we would do each other’s makeup, comb each other’s                    hair out saying we are unconquerable, we are terrible and splendid— the mouth waiting, patiently waiting. And I will meet you there                    again beyond bleeding thorns, the endless dilation, the fire that alters                    nothing; I am there already past snowy clouds, balding moss, dim swarm of stars even we can step over, it is easier this time, I promise— I am already waiting in your personal heaven, here is my hand, I will help you across. I would gladly die with you still, although I never write from this gray institution. See they are so busy trying to cure me, I’m condemned—sorry, I have been given the job of vacuuming the desert forever, well, no more than eight hours                    a day. And it’s really just about a thousand miles of cafeteria; a large one in any event. With its miniature plastic knives, its tuna salad and Saran-Wrapped genitalia will somebody                    please get me out of here, sorry. I am happy to say that every method, massive pharmaceuticals, art therapy and edifying films as well as others I would prefer not to mention—I mean, every single technique known to the mouth—sorry!—to our most kindly compassionate science is being employed to restore me to normal well-being and cheerful stability. I go on vacuuming toward a small diamond light burning off in the distance. Remember me. Do you remember me? In the night’s windowless darkness when I am lying cold and numb and no one’s fiddling with the lock, or shining flashlights in my eyes, although I never write, secretly I long to die with you, does that count?

[loosejournal]

Our Conversation by Franz Wright

Pure gaze, you are lightning beyond the last trees and you are the last trees’ past, branching green lightning of terminal brain branches numened densely with summer’s hunter color, as night comes on, the ocean they conceal gone berserk, wind still rising. Pure seeing, dual vortex doors to the blue fire where sex is burned away, and all is as it was and I am being offered in your eyes, as in cupped hands, the water of to never thirst again. Again I turn away, and the future comes, all at once towering around me on every side, and I am lost. Pure looking, past pain (this is promised): we must have wed on poverty’s most hair-raising day delighting, flashing risk, risk unfailingly lighting the way, anything possible in that dissolving of seam between minds, no more golden time— each step I took the right step, words came to me finally and finding the place you had set for them, once again wrote themselves down. Till true word’s anvil ring, and solid tap of winged blind cane come, I wish you all the aloneness you hunger for. That big kitchen table where you sit laughing with friends, I see it happening. And I wish that I could not be so much with you when I’m suddenly not; that inwardly you might switch time, to sleep and winter while you went about your life, until you woke up well, our conversation resumed. Ceaseless blue lightning, this love passing through me: I know somehow it will go on reaching you, reaching you instantly when I’m not in the way; when it is no longer deflected by all the dark bents, all I tried to overcome but I could not— so much light pulled off course as it passed within reach, so much lost, lost in me, but no more.

[loosejournal]

Homage by Franz Wright

There are a few things I will miss, a girl with no shirt on lighting a cigarette and brushing her hair in the mirror; the sound of a mailbox opening, somewhere, and closing at two in the morning of the first snow, and the words for them.

[loosejournal]

Morning by Frank O'Hara

I’ve got to tell you how I love you always I think of it on grey mornings with death

in my mouth the tea is never hot enough then and the cigarette dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you and look out the window at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock the buses glow like clouds and I am lonely thinking of flutes

I miss you always when I go to the beach the sand is wet with tears that seem mine

although I never weep and hold you in my heart with a very real humor you’d be proud of

the parking lot is crowded and I stand rattling my keys the car is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now where did you eat your lunch and were there lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think of you without me in the sentence you depress me when you are alone

Last night the stars were numerous and today snow is their calling card I’ll not be cordial

there is nothing that distracts me music is only a crossword puzzle do you know how it is

when you are the only passenger if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go

[loosejournal]

On the Road by Anna Akhmatova, tr. Jane Kenyon

Though this land is not my own I will never forget it, or the waters of its ocean, fresh and delicately icy. Sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine. Late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pine trees. And the sun goes down in waves of ether in such a way that I can't tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is within me again.

1964

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The Suitor by Jane Kenyon

We lie back to back. Curtains lift and fall, like the chest of someone sleeping. Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; they show their light undersides, turning all at once like a school of fish. Suddenly I understand that I am happy. For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping for short visits, like a timid suitor.

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Ghost Q&A by Anne Carson

Q how do you know you’re a ghost A it’s the sliding

Q is it like sleep A like scything

Q do you feel old or young A space and time are wrong

Q do you eat, is there food A the sliding affects my nerves

Q what about up and down A just vectors

Q do you have language A aren’t I talking to you

Q I mean grammar A the verb

Q that is a contradiction A no it isn’t

Q just testing A have I had this dream before

Q yet you’re also awake A I contradict myself all the time

Q do you see people can you see me A if you close your eyes

Q what about moods A the edges are freezing

Q is that good A yes

Q is it crowded A are you joking

Q are there ghosts in this room A most of the objects here are ghosts

Q really A have you been to Paris

Q no A Paris is a ghost

Q no it’s not A have you read Thomas Pynchon

Q but we digress A a ghost has no right angles

Q how do you relax A swimming

Q who is that man A he does the zeroes

Q did you say swimming A I saw you at Saks once buying makeup in the middle of the night

Q wasn’t me A it was the night the counter flooded

Q no A you can’t put one in till you take one out

Q one what A zero

Q does your hair keep growing A yes but it is apples

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INTERVIEWER

Do you prefer to write from your dreams and unconscious, as you do in “Song,” or to make things up? How do you choose?

GLÜCK

It’s not choose. Something presents itself and you have an instinct for what you can use, the way a bird building a nest knows, Oh, I need a little piece of red ribbon there, and then goes out searching for red ribbon, or the bird might not know that but see the red ribbon and think, Hmm, that has my name on it. You use what you come across, and you come across your dreams with regularity. I don’t sit at my desk and think, Now I will use something from my recent dream. It’s more like I wake up with a line and I write it down and I look at it, and it’s mysterious because the dream is mysterious—I don’t know what it means. Then I invent a context for it. Or I fail.

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Amor Fati by Jane Hirshfield

Little soul, you have wandered lost a long time. The woods all dark now, birded and eyed. Then a light, a cabin, a fire, a door standing open. The fairy tales warn you: Do not go in, you who would eat will be eaten. You go in. You quicken. You want to have feet. You want to have eyes. You want to have fears.

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To Be Serious by Ted Berrigan

You will dream about me All the months of your life. You won't know whether That means anything to me or not. You will know that. It's about time You know something.

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“I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.”

Ingmar Bergman

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With My Back to the World, 1997 by Victoria Chang

This year I turned by back to the world. I let language face the front. The parting felt like a death. The first person ran away like a horse. When the first person left, there was no second or third person as I had originally thought. All that remained was repetition. And blue things. This year I stopped shaking the rain off of umbrellas and nothing bad happened. The terror of this year was emptiness. But I learned that it's possible for a sentence to have no words. That the meaning of a word can exist without the word. That life can still occur without a mind. That emptiness still swarms without the world. That it can be disconnected from the wall and still light up. The best thing about emptiness is if you close your eyes in a field, you'll open your eyes in a field.

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Orpheus and Eurydicus by Tadeusz Dąbrowski

for Sergiusz

Every day I send you an e-mail, in it I write my news, every time I end with a request: if you're there and you're well, don't write back.

[loosejournal]

Waiting for Your Call by Aria Aber

The light retreats and is generous again. No you to speak of, anywhere—neither in vicinity nor distance, 

so I look at the blue water, the snowy egret, the lace of its feathers  shaking in the wind, the lake—no, I am lying. 

There are no egrets here, no water. Most of the time,  my mind gnaws on such ridiculous fictions. 

My phone notes littered with lines like Beauty will not save you.  Or: mouthwash, yogurt, cilantro. 

A hummingbird zips past me, its luminescent plumage  disturbing my vision like a tiny dorsal fin. 

But what I want does not appear. Instead, I find the redwoods and pines,  figs that have fallen and burst open on the pavement, 

announcing that sickly sweet smell, the sweetness of grief, my prayer for what is gone. 

You are so dramatic, I say to the reflection on my phone,  then order the collected novels of Jean Rhys. 

She, too, was humiliated by her body, that it wanted such stupid, simple things: food and cherry wine, to touch someone. 

On my daily walk, I steal Meyer lemons from my neighbors’ yard,  a small pomegranate. Instead of eating them, 

I observe their casual rot on the kitchen counter,  this theatre of good things turning into something else.

[loosejournal]

Aubade After a Blizzard by Javeria Hasnain

Callous water. White as spit. Outside your window, nude branches clutch, then abandon, snow. I jostle into dawn— the ripple of your glacial breaths condensing against my neck. Death on my mind. The love you made into me— made me into— hardened between us like ice. We will slip if we walk. We must walk.