I left my baby unattended
You used to write poetry and be in love with life, and then one day, you’re sitting at a coffee shop—two years later—hopeless because you put all your poetry into the love affair and forgot that the page, unlike him, is reliable. You look at the page, next to the window, facing Bleecker, and realize that what he’s done to you, you’ve done to the page. Backburner, breadcrumb, neglect. Daddy issues. Mommy issues too.
I left my baby unattended.
How many lines of prose until you believe—or I believe that this will not happen again?
Here are a couple.
Bilbao
I
En la plaza de Don Federico,
el sol calienta las mejillas
frías de la anciana.
Poeta sin musa,
ciudad extraña,
mochila ligera y
alma pesada;
jamás ha sentido más
su juventud.
II
Idioma familiar y el
alejarse de todo
para ganar claridad.
Caminando—la lluvia
toca sus pies y no le
molesta.
Mortalidad y temporalidad,
suya y de las gotas cayendo
sobre su sombrilla.
III
Caminando en Abando
se encontró en un rincón
semiabandonado.
Las sillas
desiertas, tristes y solas.
Ellas fueron lo más familiar.
IV
Su amor se agotará y
se enamorará de nuevo.
Viajará y caminará calles
desconocidas,
será joven
luego se arrugará,
perderá todo lo que ganó,
y la risa la consumirá al
recordar su llanto.
Crecerá—
se hará más pequeña
de lo que se siente hoy.
A Shitty First Poem in French
J’ai arrivé à Paris en août
dans le neuvième,
j’ai souri — Paris a souri avec moi,
rapidement — il a changé.
Car Paris est un miroir.
Si tu es triste,
Paris pleure avec toi.
Si tu es perdu,
les rues et les musées
sont un labyrinthe.
Si tu es heureux,
le jazz rit avec toi.
Car Paris est un miroir.
Donc j’ai détesté Paris,
et j’ai adoré Paris.
Car Paris est un miroir.
It took me a while to understand—or even try to understand—why I hated Paris at first. Four months later, I see why. Unlike the cities I’ve lived in before, where I believed I saw myself mirrored, this one is, in its own way, more like myself. It is hostile, stuck in the past, and unwilling to move forward. It has a history, a language as central to its existence as is the act of breathing.
It did not open its arms and wrap itself around me like New York did, or Sydney, or my home. It did not attempt to open up for me—unless I tried, really tried, to place myself in it. Almost as strongly as it did in many other lands, asserting dominance rather than empathy.
I can’t decide if I admire it or abhor it.
Albertine
Does it make me a fraud
if I do not know what to do
with my freedom? What if
I don’t necessitate it?
At times, I find myself looking
straight into another’s eyes,
asking for instructions—
a blink, yes or no.
What to do with it?
What a limitation I find it to be,
not resisting anything.
“My newfound freedom imprisons me and paralyzes me.”
-albertine sarazzin
Wisdom Teeth
Thoughts of death, fairies,
a rat—or is it a mouse?
What’s the difference?
The year is ending. The right side
of your mouth aches, like it knows.
For things to crown means
they have been knighted,
birthed, made to fit. So,
when your tongue was dancing,
the spit accumulating in your throat,
the foreign language colonizing the
source of it all—a life was leaving you,
and four more were growing.
The old life clings, resists, and he kisses you,
with needle lips, as if searching for them
in the ruins of your mouth, with his tongue,
tying thread around the rocks and
shutting the door. You cry as you trace the empty
backs, dispossessed. But soon enough, you feel it:
the new year, the empty room, and the wisdom.
Eye Exam
Dilated pupils blur
my vision. I walk dreadfully slow.
The urge to run and leap never leaves
me, and I feel my bones calcify.
I grab onto walls, the scaffolding, the staircase:
your hands, your back, the past, the promise—I grip
Door handles without opening a door.
I wait for signals, lights, your voice.
Wait, wait, wait
I can’t see what’s down
the road or what’s in front of me.
New year, and I’m dancing in the kitchen. I’ve lost the conviction that I possess some kind of moral superiority—I know nothing, and it is not ignorance but humanity that overthrows my judgment.
I do not know how to love without letting it consume me. I do not know how to feel my feelings and also exist. I have zero clue what right and wrong mean.
My therapist used to tell me to embrace the gray until she realized I was too good of a student. Which meant everything was gray: the sky in Manhattan and Paris, my attachment to certain friendships, my ability to forget about a past life, my ability to love only enough.
For about a year, instead of living in Murray Hill, I lived in a gray area—somewhere between 33rd and Third Ave and 9th and First.
Y un día dejó de doler
tus manos de inquilino
soltaron
aquel hogar temporal.
Dejaron de decorar los pasillos,
de adornar la mesa, de traer
frutos nuevos a aquellos fantasmas
que habitaban los rincones más
oscuros de tu habitación.
Al dejar ir, supiste al fin
que la luz no existía en aquel
espacio que se ofrecía, con
fecha de expiración—
y saliste a la calle.
El semáforo te parpadea;
dos luces rojas te miran.
Paras. Mira hacia arriba.
Las nubes, el sol y la brisa
te reciben con la calidez
del abrazo de un desconocido
que te sonríe, besa y suelta,
todo tan breve—fugaz
como las gotas de sudor
derramadas un día de invierno.
Y cambia el color,
Cruzas la calle y al llegar
a un destino no fijado, te sentiste
más en casa que cuando la luz
estaba naranja.
A Pile Of Electric Potential after Chelsea Hodson
Half plugged in,
never working. Have I ever finished
anything? My thoughts know
no end—my anxieties, worse. Orgasm
never reaches me. I find myself hostage
to the perpetual pain of waiting—for pleasure,
an ending, a wall to hit, a
