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)
Unsettling Relations 