This exclusive shit I don’ t share with the world.
50 Cent
I, Herman, made medicinal — concocted potions in ways my former’ s was hearsay;
Turned palomas christened Zora on to formulas husbands roll over n mitzvah.
I, a black lad, proud Virginian, selling out Liberty Hall n pinched w/ stickpins
in Woodlawn, do bequeath my next-to-last oratory:
So I'll speak ill of the dead. A was crooked,
planting the small left finger of the raccoon in the upholstery
before he sold the car. B made certain to point out Celia's
bewildered look before her pink slip came in the flimsy institution.
In the videos of C, a jejune overwhelmed the cast.
The sculptures in this gallery have been
carefully treated with a protective wax
so that visitors may touch them.
— exhibitions, the art institute
of chicago
Stone soldier, it's okay now.
I've removed my rings, my watch, my bracelets.
I'm allowed, brave girl,
to touch you here, where the mail covers your throat,
your full neck, down your shoulders
to here, where raised unlatchable buckles
mock-fasten your plated armor.
Nothing peels from you.
Walking back to the office after lunch,
I saw Hans. “Mister Isham, Mister Isham,”
He called out in his hurry, “Herr Wegner needs you.
A woman waiting for a border pass
Took poison, she is dead, and the police
Are there to take the body.” In the hall,
The secretaries stood outside their doors
Silently waiting with Wegner. “Sir,” he said,
“It was her answer on the questionnaire,
A clerk for the Gestapo. So it was.”
Within the outer office, by the row
Of wooden chairs, one lying on its side,
I summon up Panofskv from his bed
Among the famous dead
To build a tomb which, since I am not read,
Suffers the stone’ s mortality instead;
Which, by the common iconographies
Of simple visual ease,
Usurps the place of the complexities
Of sound survivors once preferred to noise:
I stumble down around torn peaks
“Fit the right suit
to trick them all.”
the questions fall
around allure. Poems floated
from the hearth
sparks
The neck
of the flask
pitch black-getting bored
jacked
also madness, insidious
intended ghost
(days late)
I cross green & white flowered seas
Valentines, May Day
I cut out the “Heart with Snowflake”
Myself but it is not mine, Forget
This bloody coat bloody shirt, I
Think it is the writing that makes
Me sick, The scores and scores of
Incidental music, this nosebleed all
Spring all wet, I’ m positively angry
with the Impertinence of it! I’ m
Sewing up the kinks in this film, I’ m
Trying to! I’ m trying to burn a light
Between, There’ s a light and I cable
my voice on it but it rips when I trace
Anything! WORKS ON PAPER, THE SHIP
OF DEATH “Oh build it!” Sings the
In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud
they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming
beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening
of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed
by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled
the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.
They said to me no, don’ t take any, no, don’ t touch, that is burning
hot. No, don’ t try to touch, to hold, that weighs too much, that
hurts.
They said to me: Read, write. And I tried, I took up a word, but it
struggled, it clucked like a frightened hen, wounded, in a cage of
black straw, spotted with old traces of blood.
Translated from the French
