Poetry

Last May, my friend Youssef Daoudi published a graphic novel about the filmmaker Orson Welles called The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow. One of the many things Daoudi’s fascinating work highlights is how difficult it can be for artists to grow when their first public offering is considered a classic. Welles went on to have a long career, but nothing he did was as well regarded as Citizen Kane. He’s not the only artist to experience this. Ralph Ellison never published a novel after Invisible Man and Harper Lee never wanted the follow-up to To Kill a Mockingbird in the world. Lauryn Hill and Jeff Buckley each only recorded one solo album. Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting to someone who wasn’t a relative while he…

Mask of Khonsu Let those who seek my soul be dishonored and shamed.—Psalm 35:4 Here you are, “on view”the mask that was placed over your head, your eternal breath,misting the tamarisk and acacia. You look at me, brother,across the palindrome of time bending the shackles of centuriesso we can each see the conquest fresh. It was long before youand long after me, still. Our peace lost in timesof warring madness. I try to block the wicked silhouette,the doubled deception of reflective glass, the border making lightof the too bright and blessed sun. A quiet sight when you appear and hold my eyes in yours,become ourselves again. Wandering the banks unharmed,unarmed with words of defense. They stormed through youand brought us down so low. Where can we standwhere their shadow won’t…

No one stole your money.No one stole your whole heartthen climbed into a stolen planeand stole away into the nightto disappear entirely, stealingdarkness itself, then dawn.What name would you even callinto the shadows betweenhere and gone, yours and no one’s,what color could you give it,this shade of somethingslightly less than life?Better to leave it whole.Pure death—like an unmined diamond.Keep the light of the fireaway from it—clean, untemperedby the tedious heat of language—safe from your magpie, morbid wayof turning and turningyour pain in your handsuntil you’ve crushed it to dust.And anyway, who are you to sayI lost the world? No one. To admitthat you held the world at all?…

A Room of Its Own Sun butts into the greatAmerican breakfast area— malted vanilla wafflemaker, actual bananas. Every morning I selloff the world for parts, by bedtime find a dentedfender on my threshold (the blood on my doorpost’sonly there to spare itself). I need a cleanroom, glinting forceps to remove (is that flagstill up there ruining the moon?). A big ideais just waiting for me to occur to—I keep itin the safe behind this frame whose impetusis all it depicts. Don’t Look Up The name of that lake,the Russian one; if the pig-hearted manstill lives. When my pie chart of whatI need to know is complete, scratchon my plaque: she was one in a hundredpercent circumference. Some kids broke intothe mausoleum, threw the bones around,which is one way to see…

Y. Ni esto ni lo otro.Ni igual ni diferente. Puesto que se había pasadola nochequitando los puntossobre las íesy estaba nadandoen un mar tan picadoy resbaloso,hecho solo de ellos—que se excitabanal coincidir—,le aliviaba excluirsede ser una certeza. Y. Translated from the Spanish Not one thing or the other.Not equal nor different. Given that he had spentthe nightremoving the dotsover his i’sand was swimmingin a sea so choppyand slippery,made solely of those dots—they were elatedto collide—he was relieved to opt outof being something certain. L. Los higos están a punto. Algunos trozos muertos, diseminados después de un ataque de cotorras. El pañolón del viento es sedoso. La cabeza de gárgola del bote de jabón resplandece en el borde de la pila. Gotea la manguera medio enrollada en el suelo. “Estaría aquí…

S is for, with a Line from Keats Surely I must be in loveto make sabayon. To unshelf LarousseGastronomique, page to Zfor zabaglione, reassure myselfmarsala is customary, to ask eggsand brown sugar to be enough.Surely I want you to eat arrantlyat your midnight easel, oils,my crumbs, on your longfingers. Surely I am peaky,beat for minutes, requiring machinepower to achieve such volume.All to be folded with cocoaand salt, piped—pleasurenever is at home. Tangzhong, with a Line from Genet For you, my exhaustionis but a crumb. Gray afternoon, tenebroustrain clattering copper on the stove. Flourand water, milk and my beckoningspoon. I did not mean to be mean,alliterative, or misjudge. Let medraw trails in this thickening,just a smell starts me—slowly, the yawningburble, and I exist, improved.A man must dream a long timein order…