This is Marlene Nourbese writing towards the end of Zong!, in an epigraph of sorts: To not tell the story that must be told, I employed a variety of techniques: —I white out and black out words (is there a difference?). —I mutilate the text as the fabric of African life and the lives of […]
Tag Archives: poem
Poems for Easy-Reading When You are Alone
We partly undid our clothes–there weren’t many As it was in divine burning July. Enjoyment of flesh through Half-torn clothes; Quickly bared flesh; apparition Twenty-six years passed; and now returned To remain in this poem — “To Remain” by C.P. Cavafy Come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though […]
I Like…I Like…I Like…
I like a crowded world. I like rooms, with or without windows. I like things in rooms. I like the color grey. I like ash and mud. I like the phoenix. I like corn cobs hanging down from the fire place. I like deserted homelands. I like portraits with invisible faces. I like blindness. I […]
A Poem that Laughs
Incantations by Laughter Written by Velimir Khlebnikov O, laugh, laughers! O, laugh out, laughers! You who laugh with laughs, you who laugh it up laughishly O, laugh out laugheringly O, belaughable laughterhood–the laughter of laughering laughers! O, unlaugh it outlaughingly, belaughering laughists! Laughily, laughily, Uplaugh, enlaugh, laughlings, laughlings Laughlets, laughlets. O, laugh, laughers! O, laugh […]
Invisible Cities…and The Dead
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. A bewitching little book. No use trying to figure out what it is. Is it a collection of poems, a series of vignettes, a novel, a travel guide, an ethnographic commentary, a bureaucratic document, a lineup of fireside tales, a meditation? What I can tell you is that it’s a rewrite or, […]
The Story That Loves
What is a love story? When I wasn’t thinking about Virgil’s Aeneid or lost in the wtf world of Amos Tutuola, I found myself in the past few days thinking about love stories. What, I want to know, is the love in stories and the story in love? I typed “love story” into Wikipedia and […]
The Apocalyptus
When the scrambling for Truth is over And God, suffering from the munchies, Is eating travelers off the narrow road
Marionette
As a carver of marionettes, There was always the danger of Being lost in the concreteness of being, Shattered to lovely bits of dead discoveries, Against an adamant world without voids. But as a wandering dream catcher, I collect metaphors for a living. You laugh, but ejaculating into Gaps gaping because of having been Chipped […]
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