Blog toward A Poem about Love

Nicole Pekarske reads Intermissa, Venus at Minas


One of the poems I read at Sunday's very wonderful reading at Minas. This will soon appear in the new anthology from New York's Other Countries collective (thanks Glenroy)


Notes Toward A Poem About Love

Remember:
The long trip back from the Carolinas –
how he looked, smooth in silhouette dozing

you drove 80 miles an hour from Durham to DC
through a rain-slicked, receding South
deep in a groove, desperate for return for shared, familiar bed

or earlier the night before the downtown Charlotte club –

How, even dressed in 'b-boy hoodlum mode'
he was glorious, shone a beacon in the smoky dark.
New Man in Town, undressed by the eyes of Sunday regulars

confused by this bastard busting their games
the half-seen other he leaves with;

or later, even: Picture the future, next week, tomorrow–

he strides in from work tired
complaining of new madness
then winks changes for his late-night rituals

On the phone, he laughs at a joke and his gaze turns,
ablaze with anticipated retelling.

Then forget:
Think of Lack             The absence of that Presence.
A world without memory       the otherwise dull moments
      Stop             Think (for once)
           Meditate       Slowly begin to write