I like these.
Low
by Arda Collins
It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting; Low; Bakeries; Lakes; Living Rooms; Movies It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting
for the light to change; a bakery.
It’s a lake. It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by
pines.
There’s a couple.
It’s a living room. The upholstery is yellow and the furniture is
walnut.
They used to lie down on the carpet
between the sofa and the coffee table, after the guests had left.
The cups and saucers were still.
Their memories of everything that occurred took place
with the other’s face as a backdrop and sometimes
the air was grainy like a movie about evening, and sometimes there
was an ending
in the air that looked like a scene from a different beginning,
in which they are walking.
It took place alongside a scene in which one of them looks up at a
brown rooftop
early in March. The ground hadn’t softened.
One walked in front of the other breathing.
The other saw a small house as they passed and breathed. The
reflections in the windows
made them hear the sounds on the hill: a crow, a dog, and
branches-
and they bent into the hour that started just then, like bending to
walk under branches.
I love the New Yorker.
Not for Chopin
by Arda Collins
Don’t put off your shower anymore;
Chopin, Frédéric;
Music, Musicians;
Preludes;
Listening;
Pianos;
Pianists Don’t put off your shower anymore
listening to Chopin.
Take the Preludes personally;
he’s telling you that he can describe a progression
that you yourself have been unable to see,
shapely, broad light at one-thirty,
evening travelling up a road,
an overcast day as gentle bones.
Don’t remember the music;
remember it as something obvious
that you are compelled, doomed, to obscure
and complicate. You erase it twice.
The first time
as you listened, unable
to have it,
the second time
as you were unable
to remember it.
Angry with Chopin,
what does he know?
The components of your dinner are waiting for you downstairs.
The golden evening takes flat, slow turns outside.
Become gray.
Listen to him describe what you would be like
if you were blind, sitting in a chair, at a wake, the days short, that there might
be nothing
else, night,
content, unable, unwishing, to recall desire, or sight.
by Arda Collins
It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting; Low; Bakeries; Lakes; Living Rooms; Movies It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting
for the light to change; a bakery.
It’s a lake. It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by
pines.
There’s a couple.
It’s a living room. The upholstery is yellow and the furniture is
walnut.
They used to lie down on the carpet
between the sofa and the coffee table, after the guests had left.
The cups and saucers were still.
Their memories of everything that occurred took place
with the other’s face as a backdrop and sometimes
the air was grainy like a movie about evening, and sometimes there
was an ending
in the air that looked like a scene from a different beginning,
in which they are walking.
It took place alongside a scene in which one of them looks up at a
brown rooftop
early in March. The ground hadn’t softened.
One walked in front of the other breathing.
The other saw a small house as they passed and breathed. The
reflections in the windows
made them hear the sounds on the hill: a crow, a dog, and
branches-
and they bent into the hour that started just then, like bending to
walk under branches.
I love the New Yorker.
Not for Chopin
by Arda Collins
Don’t put off your shower anymore;
Chopin, Frédéric;
Music, Musicians;
Preludes;
Listening;
Pianos;
Pianists Don’t put off your shower anymore
listening to Chopin.
Take the Preludes personally;
he’s telling you that he can describe a progression
that you yourself have been unable to see,
shapely, broad light at one-thirty,
evening travelling up a road,
an overcast day as gentle bones.
Don’t remember the music;
remember it as something obvious
that you are compelled, doomed, to obscure
and complicate. You erase it twice.
The first time
as you listened, unable
to have it,
the second time
as you were unable
to remember it.
Angry with Chopin,
what does he know?
The components of your dinner are waiting for you downstairs.
The golden evening takes flat, slow turns outside.
Become gray.
Listen to him describe what you would be like
if you were blind, sitting in a chair, at a wake, the days short, that there might
be nothing
else, night,
content, unable, unwishing, to recall desire, or sight.