as long as i have my hand...
Sarah Manguso is probably my favorite living poet, right now at this very moment. (Tomorrow, it might be someone else.) I think I posted a couple of her poems from The Captain Lands in Paradise...um, like between....three and seven weeks ago? I'm not good at gauging that sort of thing, and I'm way too lazy to look backwards and check. Anyway, here are some of the (shorter) ones I like from Siste Viator, which is her other book of poetry that the school library has.
Est, Est, Est
The discovery of Italy's best wine,
and not alcohol poisoning, is what killed the prelate.
You've got to hide your love away,
not because showing it is useless,
but because it isn't.
Don't let me get what I want.
I love you as dead people love-- in every way imaginable.
Don't let me bring that cat inside.
If you leave your wife with her beautiful name,
don't tell me.
See this deer track?
Just walk away.
When he had any, Dostoyevsky threw away his money.
I won't let you in my house.
Address to an Absent Lover
The boy speaks in Russian (I understand him neither in the dream nor in real life). He opens his eyes and looks at me, apologizing in English for keeping them closed.
When I wake up I think he must have seen me. But when I kiss him he looks surprised, as if he were blind.
The night I met you I wrote, It is possible I have imagined my entire life.
*
My great-grandmother's lamp is mine now. It is made of rose quartz-- that is, it is made of poetry.
More poetry: A coin you dropped when you took your pants off is still on the floor. Please come back and pick it up.
More: The scar on my hand I got cleaning the house for you has outlasted you. In this way you are indelible, but only as long as I have my hand.
My roommate's boyfriend ate most of a jar of peanut butter in his sleep last night. I scratched my arms up again in my sleep last night and now they sting. In January, I'll begin taking Advanced Poetry and Biopsychology and some other classes I'm not as interested in. My father once shut himself inside a linen closet in his sleep. We have to be careful, when we're unconscious. We just lose all our self-control. I've touched brains before, and held them in my hands, but I've never touched a human brain. I know they're smaller than you might expect. I know the names of parts, and sometimes where the parts are and what function they serve. I'm looking forward to learning what runs along those creases. (Which dogs and rabbits don't have-- a rabbit's brain is as smooth as a tomato.)