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and if
I were to say
I love you and
I do love you
and I say it
now and again
and again
would you say
parataxis
would you see
the world revolves
anew
its axis
you
From Same Life by Maureen McLane. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2008 by Maureen McLane. All rights reserved.
Sailing with just the jib
The earth a broken crib
and all the babes a-squall
cry no more cry no more
There’s such a thing as bit rot
you said you said
it seemed everyone was reading
about extinction amidst the extinction
as if knowing were enabling. Winner
Let’s go to Dawn School
and learn again to begin
oh something different
from repetition
Let’s go to the morning
and watch the sun smudge
every bankrupt idea
of nature “you can’t write about
anymore” said my friend
the photographer “except
as science”
Let’s enroll ourselves
in the school of the sky
where knowing
how to know
and unknow is everything
we’ll come to know
under what they once thought
was the dome of the world
They were not kidding
when they said they were blinded
by a vision of love.
It was not just a manner
of speaking or feeling
though it’s hard to say
how the dead
really felt harder
even than knowing the living.
You are so opaque
to me your brief moments
of apparent transparency
seem fraudulent windows
in a Brutalist structure
everyone admires.
The effort your life
requires exhausts me.
I am not kidding.