i feel like a stranger

When you’re drunk it’s so much fun—

Your stories don’t make sense.

An early fall has strung

The elms with yellow flags.

—Anna Akhmatova

*

“i feel like a stranger” says

the woman across the table

whose glass of wine is always

the first of the evening.

The second evaporates

in the mind before the swallow

of her “disappearing disease.”

*

The sun sets tonight

without navigational direction.

Our farmhouse turned

the wrong way round.

*

A frame of blue jays

*peck *peck *peck

– a beak of grain beyond

winter

a world away.

*

This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” (ostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenie

the world made new again

ostranenie (estrangement or defamiliarization) or strangification (the ugly translation)

a term gleaned from the beauty of the Russian ostranenie ostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenie to describe the poems I love

this woman

X

not a poem

but a plea

i feel like a stranger

a poetic turn of phrase

to myself

a question

this moment a simile for “slip”

unseasonable thaw

ice suspense

betweenfallingdown&catchingyourself

your ampersand hand, bluer

bruised w*enched

arm, broken

open, shoulder

(a verb that would dislocate

if anything were

still

in that place

you remember

the hip bone

connected

to the brain

*

44.4228° N, 78.3541° W 22/9/2018

*

(from my mother’s brain, an Alzheimer’s journal)