October (section I), by Louise Glück

Is it winter again, is it cold again,

didn’t Frank just slip on the ice,

didn’t he heal, weren’t the spring seeds planted

 

didn’t the night end,

didn’t the melting ice

flood the narrow gutters

 

wasn’t my body

rescued, wasn’t it safe

 

didn’t the scar form, invisible

above the injury

 

terror and cold,

didn’t they just end, wasn’t the back garden

harrowed and planted–

 

I remember how the earth felt, red and dense,

in stiff rows, weren’t the seeds planted,

didn’t vines climb the south wall

 

I can’t hear your voice

for the wind’s cries, whistling over the bare ground

 

I no longer care

what sound it makes

 

when was I silenced, when did it first seem

pointless to describe that sound

 

what it sounds like can’t change what it is–

 

didn’t the night end, wasn’t the earth

safe when it was planted

 

didn’t we plant the seeds,

weren’t we necessary to the earth,

 

the vines, were they harvested?

Done With, by Ann Stanford

My house is torn down–

Plaster sifting, the pillars broken,

Beams jagged, the wall crushed by the bulldozer.

The whole roof has fallen

On the hall and the kitchen

The bedrooms, the parlor.

 

They are trampling the garden–

My mother’s lilac, my father’s grapevine,

The freesias, the jonquils, the grasses.

Hot asphalt goes down

Over the torn stems, and hardens.

 

What will they do in springtime

Those bulbs and stems groping upward

That drown in earth under the paving,

Thick with sap, pale in the dark

As they try the unrolling of green.

 

May they double themselves

Pushing together up to the sunlight,

May they break through the seal stretched above them

Open and flower and cry we are living.

Audience, by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

1

 

People think, at the theatre, an audience is tricked into believing it’s looking at life.

 

The film image is so large, it goes straight into your head.

 

There’s no room to be aware of or interested in people around you.

 

Girls and cool devices draw audience, but unraveling the life of a real human brings the

outsiders.

 

I wrote before production began, “I want to include all of myself, a heartbroken person

who hasn’t worked for years, who’s simply not dead.”

 

Many fans feel robbed and ask, “What kind of show’s about one person’s unresolved

soul?”

 

 

2

 

There’s sympathy for suffering, also artificiality.

 

Having limbs blown off is some person’s reality, not mine.

 

I didn’t want to use sympathy for others as a way through my problems.

 

There’s a gap between an audience and particulars, but you can be satisfied by

particulars, on several levels: social commentary, sleazy fantasy.

 

Where my film runs into another’s real life conditions seem problematic, but they don’t

link with me.

 

The linking is the flow of images, thwarting a fan’s transference.

 

If you have empathy to place yourself in my real situation of face-to-face intensity, then

there would be no mirror, not as here.

 

 

3

 

My story is about the human race in conflict with itself and nature.

 

An empathic princess negotiates peace between nations and huge creatures in the wild.

 

I grapple with the theme, again and again.

 

Impatience and frustration build among fans.

 

“She achieves a personal voice almost autistic in lack of affect, making ambiguous her

well-known power to communicate emotion, yet accusing a system that mistakes what

she says.”

 

Sex, tech are portrayed with lightness, a lack of divisions that causes anxieties elsewhere.

 

When I find a gap, I don’t fix it, don’t intrude like a violent, stray dog, separating flow

and context, to conform what I say to what you see.

 

Time before the show was fabulous, blank.

 

When I return, as to an object in space, my experience is sweeter, not because of

memory.

 

The screen is a mirror where a butterfly tries so hard not to lose the sequence of the last

moments.

 

I thought my work should reflect society, like mirrors in a cafe, double-space.

 

There’s limited time, but we feel through film media we’ve more.

 

 

4

 

When society deterritorialized our world with money, we managed our depressions via

many deterritorializations.

 

Feeling became vague, with impersonal, spectacular equivalents in film.

 

My animator draws beautifully, but can’t read or write.

 

He has fears, which might become reality, but Godzilla is reality.

 

When I saw the real princess, I found her face inauspicious, ill-favored, but since I’d

heard she was lovely, I said, “Maybe, she’s not photogenic today.”

 

Compared to my boredom, I wondered if her life were not like looking into a stream at a

stone, while water rushed over me.

 

I told her to look at me, so her looking is what everything rushes around.

 

I don’t care about story so much as, what do you think of her? Do you like her?

 

She’s not representative, because of gaps in the emotion, only yummy parts, and dialogue

that repeats.

 

She pencils a black line down the back of her leg.

 

A gesture turns transparent and proliferates into thousands of us doing the same.

 

Acknowledging the potential of a fan club, she jokingly describes it as “suspect”.

 

She means performance comes out through the noise.

 

 

5

 

At the bar, you see a man catch hold of a girl by the hair and kick her.

 

You could understand both points of view, but in reality, no.

 

You intervene, feeling shame for hoping someone else will.

 

It becomes an atmosphere, a situation, by which I mean, groups.

 

In school we’re taught the world is round, and with our own eyes we confirmed a small

part of what we could imagine.

 

Because you’re sitting in a dark place, and I’m illuminated, and a lot of eyes are directed

at me, I can be seen more clearly than if I mingled with you, as when we were in high

school.

 

We were young girls wanting to describe love and to look at it from outer space.

Thinking in Bed, by Dennis Lee

I’m thinking in bed,

Cause I can’t get out

Till I learn how to think

What I’m thinking about;

What I’m thinking about

Is a person to be–

A sort of a person

Who feels like me.

 

I might still be Alice,

Excepting I’m not.

And Snoopy is super,

But not when it’s hot;

I couldn’t be Piglet,

I don’t think I’m Pooh,

I know I’m not Daddy

And I can’t be you.

 

My breakfast is waiting.

My clothes are all out,

But what was that thing

I was thinking about?

I’ll never get up

If I lie here all day;

But I still haven’t thought,

So I’ll just have to stay.

 

If I was a Grinch

I expect I would know.

But I don’t think so.

There’s so many people

I don’t seem to be–

I guess I’ll just have to

Get up and be me.

Francesco and Clare, by David St. John

It was there, in that little town

On top of the mountain, they walked,

Francesco and Chiara,

That’s who they were, that’s what

They told themselves–a joke, their joke

About two saints, failed lovers held apart

From the world of flesh, Francis and Clare,

Out walking the old city, two saints,

Sainted ones, holy, held close to the life…

Poverty, the pure life, the one

Life for Franziskus and Klara,

Stalwarts given

To the joys of God in heaven

And on earth, Mother, praising Brother Sun

And sister Moon; twin saints, unified

In their beauty as one, Francisco and Clara,

A beauty said of God’s will and word, bestowed

And polished by poverty, François

With Claire, the chosen poverty, the true

Poverty that would not be their lives…

And they took their favorite names, Clare and Francesco,

Walking the streets of stone the true saints

Walked, watching as the larks swirled

Above the serene towers, the larks

Francesco once described as the color

Of goodness, that is, of the earth, of the dead…

Larks who’d not seek for themselves any extravagant

Plumage, humble and simple, God’s birds

Twirling and twisting up the pillowing air…

And Francesco said to Clare, Oh little plant I love,


My eyes are almost blind with Brother Sun…tell me,


Who hides inside God’s time…?

And Clare, rock of all Poor Clares, stood

In the warm piazza overlooking the valley, weary,

Her shoulder bag sagging from the weight

Of her maps and books, and said across the rain-slick

Asphalt of the parking lot, to the poor bird climbing

The wheel of sky it always had loved best,

Dear lark, dear saint, all my kisses on your nest!

Garden of Bees, by Matthew Rohrer

The narcissus grows past

 

the towers. Eight gypsy

 

sisters spread their wings

 

in the garden. Their gold teeth

 

are unnerving. Every single

 

baby is asleep. They want

 

a little money and I give

 

them less. I’m charming and

 

handsome. They take my pen.

 

I buy the poem from the garden

 

of bees for one euro. A touch

 

on the arm. A mystery word.

 

The sky has two faces.

 

For reasons unaccountable

 

my hand trembles.

 

In Roman times if they were

 

horrified of bees they kept it secret

Forever War, by Nate Pritts

In studying the anomaly

it was determined that holiday decorations

look sad out of season,

that there’s no excuse for the mistakes

of my people. Red paper hearts

on the front door into April,

a cauldron that doubles as a planter

in summer. Always the starscape

to help keep me honest, to remind me

that distance is easy to cross.

The analytic belt I’m equipped with

reminds me of an indescribable autumn

from one hundred generations ago

though even last year

I was someone else.

I was faced with a choice.

Proceed with the same core

or blow it up to restart

& maybe go further. Most of my programming

has survived into this new battle.

I can smell faint ocean

salt on the breeze & I have different

reactions for its presence or absence.

Now is the time to overcome problems.

I debate the finer points of being desperate,

of wanting things to remain

as they are, though they can’t.

I’d rather not go into details

since specifics make me queasy,

like in pictures when people put their heads

too close together. How can they stand

such forced intimacy?

I take off in search of my home planet.

My resolve is stronger than ever.