Multitudes (6 page)
Authors: Margaret Christakos
Tags: #Poetry, #General, #Canadian, #Women Authors
WISH
Every leaf on that tree
looks like a small hand
typing. Suddenly th tree
seems entirely inflamed! All of
nature a diarist.
2 banish.
2 vanish.
4 one or
th other,
2 wish.
REPLENISH
a solo
Fan n a bottle of water kept replenished from th tap
Quiet room that u keep replenishing with ur greed 4 it
Books replenished by repeat reading n rereadings that change their meaning limits
Love 4 th ones u love now who can it seems only ever evade ur replenishing want
Is it that u had it n lost it or cannot believe in ever having unless it is right here in ur palms btween ur breasts n thighs
Is it that u don’t know how 2 love n break it all 2 crumbs over n over again
Shades pulled so light jiggles under th last possible half-foot of windowspace
Piles of books in cubby shelves n air flaps taunting reread my meaning limit
Bright tongue of sun on every treeleaf waggling about solitude being 4 th weakminded
U want 2 replenish ur heat hearing heart
Want 2 love th one n th other with similar constancy (but suck @ this)
Pink hydrangeas simply flopped over with all th waters they can’t help but gorge on again n again as if blind 2 all th droughtstricken weeds
@ their ankles
@ their ankles
Ur mother, with language
Ur father with blood, also
A hard beige desktop 2 which u have added a few sepia mug prints
Th flickering of cuntlust in u when reading writing watching all th small shining tongues in th courtyard
This is a day that gets replaced by all th ones 2 come
Clean slates, clean dates
Nobody gets brought back like Alkestis it’s just a dream or thoughtcontour 2 help th living go on with their steps 2ward a black banishment (this written th last day u were 49, rather grim)
2 months of th tragedians played off against numerous bus trips 2 aphasia
Ull replenish ur autobiography as u c fit then sleep late 2 dream a last little wild one
2 redream a little wild tongue
As if being chronicled matters 2 th tree @ all, or does it?
TSAL DAY N NIGHT
N then came th last thgin n
yad in that place n she had
2 evael now. I picked up various
papers n binders n books n sehtolc
n cups n glasses. There were places
in th swodniw she could still look
out from 2 c th courtdray. I
listened 2 th sevaw of splashing water.
Fountains r now essential if a lake
is dekcal. She considered coming here skeew
ago n how could it have neeb
so many weeks. Is time real. Is
th body only ysub when awake? Really
tried 2 abate my evol 4 th
lost one but o llew it persists
calls out sirenlike. I derats in2 windows
of others. I stare ereht. She is
so beautiful some syad on many she
disgusts me. That is th case 4
th htrae itself with its gnitautculf
attractions. Am I ladit. Am I not
tidal. Llits she dillydallies picking up paper
pads, snioc, pencils. Discourages herself
from ever gnivael wonders where 2 go
txen. How is it light
will llaf on her, n th coming
speels will soothe. I love 2 ynam
2 b enola yet how I want
loneness 4 a tcirts diet now. Women
r always thought of as th srevig,
th dehcatta ones, not th hermits. I
can raeh my deskvoice shuffling @ ksud,
scratching a tnelis wall with delighted perversities.
Renol. Resol. Revol. Aloft n alive perhaps
4 a week more of introspection. Th
earth sdeen inspecting. As does her traeh.
I talk of gnihtyreve n rather little.
Further into this episode she skaerb a
glass on th towel rack n begins
niaga 2 read Christensen’s
Alphabet
aloud. I
Alphabet
aloud. I
exist.
Play
Excess is the culprit.
Euripedes, trans. Anne Carson
Euripedes, trans. Anne Carson
hard to say whether it's really really late or really really early.
Earlate.
January 4, 2012 at 7:22
It was really friggin early. And now the day is very wonked.
January 4, 2012 at 15:01
library vibrancy; solo silence silo, my kind of shush.
January 11, 2012 at 16:31
Reading family geneology in four directions that each loop
around to crisscross the others, sort of like the dog’s
meander-tracks out on the lakesnow yesterday
January 17, 2012 at 17:21
simmer down kiddo.
January 20, 2012 at 13:10
only bright spot of the last 3 days was provided by the
sizzling hot female paramedics.
January 23, 2012 at 00:58
has to comment on the huge infrastructure of sense-making
involved in a sentence like the above. We take it for granted,
every second.
January 24, 2012 at 19:42
tearing through journals from 1984–1991; recognize one's past
self is probably the best mentor at many points.
January 27, 2012 at 12:00
really frickin irritating dreams.
February 4, 2012 at 11:53
slow reading has another name. it's reading.
February 7, 2012 at 12:04
too much enough not enough much too little. and over. revise
the measure.
March 1, 2012 at 11:38
is running a mok a pparently today.
March 4, 2012 at 16:52
see there's nowhere inperson speech you can walk up to
somebody and say excess = x s. s’why I love the internet.
March 8, 2012 at 14:21
considering the chasm so often between carers and careers.
March 12, 2012 at 17:31
after being away several days, opens up the kitchen computer
and finds a ‘How to make a fried egg’ video link. The kids are
all right indeed.
March 19, 2012 at 14:44
biking silken wind or what.
March 20, 2012 at 13:29
saw forsythia on the way to see cynthia.
March 24, 2012 at 15:56
jop-drawed by those hills. who made such hills? how do those
hills hold? dam-wild hill action.
April 5, 2012 at 16:49
each ache each aches.
April 19, 2012 at 12:52
wrioting.
April 19, 2012 at 15:10
trying to think outside the bosc.
April 25, 2012 at 4:21
famous first words.
April 25, 2012 at 16:33
oasisish.
April 28, 2012 at 11:25
accordion: full pedal jacket.
May 2, 2012 at 9:21
swall swallow wallow allow low ow: the draw of words has its
own progressions … always furious and lurid and turgid and so
it goes onword.
May 3, 2012 at 9:29
Hitchcock’s Marnie is the bomb.
May 4, 2012 at 16:11
good morning sweetie, might you have something on that
smells like chocolate and coconut, there's a certain waft ….
Well, mom, it's called Be Enchanted, so.
May 6, 2012 at 1:13
dreamt the twins were 2, one under each of my arms, wriggling
on a couch the way we used to. Silas says, dreams are real
when you're having them, mom.
May 7, 2012 at 9:53
hmm, what DOES one wear to a first class in Trojan tragedy?
May 8, 2012 at 1:31
Just watched beautiful mother-daughter bed clip from Akerman's
Les Rendez-vous d’Anna on YouTube and at the same time
daughter sends me Jon Hamm answers girls questions video and
I so watched it too. Both excellent.
May 12, 2012 at 00:40
sounds of moving water watery moving of sounds moving
sounds of water. water moving.
May 17, 2012 at 9:27
strength it takes to stick to your words.
May 19, 2012 at 9:23
Attention Trucks Turning. Watch out for those Attention Trucks!
May 21, 2012 at 15:02
lioves.
May 28, 2012 at 19:46
around here they turn 15. cakes exist.
June 3, 2012, at 8:42
rereading Anne Carson's bitchin ‘The Gender of Sound’
essay. ‘The main responsibility for funeral lament had
belonged to women from earliest Greek times … Yet lawgivers
of the 6th and 5th centuries … were at pains to restrict these
female outpourings to a minimum of sound and emotional
display … Laws were passed specifying the location, time,
duration, personnel, choreography, musical content and verbal
content of the women's funeral lament on the grounds that
these “harsh and barbaric sounds” were a stimulus to
“disorder and license.”’ Sound topical?
June 5, 2012 at 17:36
& just for the record, someone handed me a baby in a dream
last night. I said, um, me?
June 5, 2012 at 18:03
po v etry.
June 7, 2012 at 9:53
walk in my house and the rap playing says; fellatio
interference promiscuous homo sapiens
June 7, 2012 at 11:04
1 2 3 4 ½ hours of Glass/Wilson/Childs leads to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
hours of insane dreamstew. If it could be fresh.
June 10, 2012 at 1:22
imagining young Avril Lavigne as Iphigenia. And Cobain, at the
end, as Orestes. Both singing Mama take this badge offa me.
June 11, 2012 at 18:18
the beauty and challenge of facebook is that it is an absolutely
smeared space of the veiled/regaled and the displayed/played.
June 18, 2012 at 1:58
heat, sweat, etc.
June 20, 2012 at 13:12
interiorate; deteriority.
June 21, 2012 at 9:54
that special drowsy snarly fuck off from the back of the bus …
ah, nostalgic.
July 3, 2012 at 11:11
is noticing more often that anytime there's any kind of
conversation about anything in this country it's called a brouhaha.
July 9, 2012 at 2:59
you got your desire in/on one hand, and your loss in/on the
other, and the two hands keep smashing up against each other
like a music box monkey's cymbals. That, my margaret, is
consciousness. Hear it crash!
July 24, 2012 at 11:52
now to make an excellent salad.
July 25, 2012 at 18:13
4 pm train horn a blowin. then chuggachuggachugga.
July 30, 2012 at 15:55
suppressing the yen to kiss my sleeping daughter's feet.
July 31, 2012 at 11:13
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