(no subject)

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

Motel 1
by Allison Titus

Once.     I conjugated   every
animal    to   sorrow.    Every
sorrow    into   a  small  small
factory,      manufacturer    of
salt,  camping  gear, fur coats
and     poorly      upholstered
furniture.  Even  now it seems
like    every     version        of
melancholy      rescues        a
nocturne for the pallid sky.  A
type of permanent dusk. Fold
down    the    bedsheet.    The
room  has  earned  its sadness.
Non-descript despite how we
have   rearranged     ourselves
inside it, undressing  with cold
hands. Us   with   our   pilgrim
hearts.   Stationed   fast       to
parentheses    of    sleep   and
winter.

Marie Howe: The Promise

[mumblemutter.livejournal.com]

Marie Howe
The Promise


In the dream I had when he came back not sick
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,

he looked at me as though he couldn't speak, as if
there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn't break.

His silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,

as we do, in time.
And I told him: I'm reading all this Buddhist stuff,

and listen, we don't die when we die. Death is an event,
a threshold we pass through. We go on and on

and into light forever.
And he looked down, and then back up at me. It was the look we'd pass

across the kitchen table when Dad was drunk again and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,
in a crowded room, something important, and can't.