days spent under the bed

chickpeas, hiding under the bed
on rainy days, i think of chickpeas
and the sugared almonds she
used to keep in a contoured glass
bowl in the room of family portraits.
there are no easy ways out of here,
i must lay perfectly still, not fill my chest
too full of air, the metal springs only slightly
too close to my nose, the shoeboxes next
to me only slightly too full of buried things.
something about rainy days, buried things
and daydreams about food i never particularly
liked reminds me that the blackberry bushes
near rock pond soon will be freckled with
plump berries and thorns that snag the threads of my
sweater--the berries reach full capacity juice-wise
before the sun reaches sink-through-the-epidermis
to-heat-up-the-nerves-underneath strength. i hear slow
picking of tight mandolin strings under the
pelting rain. this house of moving parts in the
darkness of an overcast sky slips silently, loud only
through the consistency of noise.
here we fear acceleration, the intersection of breath
sped up and smile slowed down. three fingers
reach carefully towards my check,
where they bend and the top knuckle of each finger
strokes the tiny hairs of my cheek bone. i close
my eyes and it's only chickpeas and pelts of rain
and tiny upturned hairs, lullabies after i'm already
asleep, the tilling of wet april mulch--i wait patiently
from under these twisty metal bars and fragmented
daydreams for the rain to stop,
for the swallow to break the echoing of this silence.

DLS

This moment will be seen by architects

Today for breakfast I am having
Two oranges
And five slices of pineapple.

I am drinking as well--
Cups of water, tea, coffee.

Outside the day.

Inside they are taking photographs
And ask us if we mind.

-NSG

simply sitting here

simply sitting here
i watch rocket rain drops
plummet
streaking the window
freckled with dots
striping its pane with descendants.
simply sitting here
i get distracted from my books
look up from the pages
and place my chin
on my wrist,
and instead of pages passing
words i watch the
rain. plinking puddles,
dressed up clouds,
newspapers covering
heads hands pulling up
pants runners with fierce
faces children jumping
with bright green rainboots
briefcases held close
like lovers.
i once loved the rain too--
screamed out into the
night laughed with a
wet face stuck my
arms straight and
SWOOSH, i am superman;
i fly on command i fly on the wings
of muddy grass i will save
lives if you ask me and i will fly and he
often flew with me, our clothes
sticking to our skin, our arms
out our voices
loud our faces wet with laughter.
simply sitting here,
i softly hum a song under
my breath and think of
my grandma and wonder
if she is okay.

DLS

wakeful dreams

today you are here
and so am i! together, we
are here together today
and your hand has found
all its five fingers on the
dip in my side the cinch
of my waist the spot
where i ache in my sleep
and slipping into wakefulness
you mumble with closed
eyes, do i want coffee? i smile
my eyes still closed back--
i have never once in my life refused
caffeine and we stretch legs feet
tip off the foot of the bed eyes open
you are here and so am i! waking up
when we are both here and soon
we will drink coffee in bed joking
about how unfunny we are, laughing
only at only our own jokes, and
despite the buzz in my brain i'll rest
my head on your arm, the curve
of your shoulder will fit into the
bend in my neck as one lock
of hair falls from my ear, catches
my nose. the sunlight
stripes square shadows through
the windowpane it's a spring day,
summer seeps
through windows with every passing hour
spilling pent up yellow sunshine onto
winter's white canvas. i love the sunshine,
the way light splatters from my eyelashes,
fuzzies my vision, the way it feels on
my face the way it stirs me in the morning,
fluttering lids, waking smile.
soon the sunshine
will stir me with a flood of yellow rays, liquid
laughter tipped over, finding its way to the spot
where your hand used to be, that achy aching spot.
i will be here, dreaming of
dressing in florals for the sunshine
and in the morning when i wake you will be
far away--a typeface,
frozen pixels, a breaking voice--jumping
ahead, still here, lying in
bed, eyes closed, skin warm of sleep,
and you are here too with me, together,
seemingly asleep.

DLS

bird feet

birds fly on sundays, their
wings swoop and swallow,
their melodies trickle from
trees, their tiny feet
tiptoe with scintillating speed
across the sidewalk. i
saw them, three of them, today
flying with the smallest
wings, together, their
melodies trickling, the tips
of their toes raised and brushing against
the wind. my own love abides
strictly to the laws of gravity,
it stays incorrigibly
inside, stuck there,
bird feet in a puddle of
corn syrup, the sugary stick clutching
tiny toes, mute and mangled,
alive but asleep.

DLS

more candles in college courtyards

she slipped away
before passing me
on a street just
a ghost like many others
all seconds of the day
passing into some
existence where
movement resides
out of sight after an
ephemeral exit,
an opaque process,
and there are
no cross outs in my
date book to prove this
proximate
stepping out slipping away
just flickering candles
and the saxophone's
wail. (the night sky then
briefly fell under dreams
of oceanic wonderfalls
and celestial dark
clatter and poetic spring
rain.) it is always
night if you close
your eyes, you know,
the sun may also rise
but there is
no steady rise of the
sun when erratic
motion of eyelids
enclose but also
expose the
splattered paint
of a starry sky. the college
years ought to be bright,
strings of moments when day
is chosen with a swollen
breath, a beating heart,
charged with caffeine
and ticking with motion
until it suddenly stops
shattered glass on the face
of the clock, a mug on the counter,
untouched,
crashes to the floor. i don't
understand this, really i don't,
but i know i miss
the clock that broke, the
coffee left brewing in the kitchen,
the sound of a pocket phone
buzzing but not picked up, the
ghosts that never passed me
on the way to class.

dls

Wednesday

Sakht-e esta

pesadez que

traiemos estos

dias, sakht-e

So heavy and

hard to carry, the

newspaper full of

radioactivity and cuts

to Planned Parenthood,

rebels down in Libya and

unemployment up and

this rolling sense that

no one in Washington

gets anything other than

lobbyists across their

desks. Tan pesado es,

one more death among

us all trying to

live bright

college years under this

sky not redolent, just

so heavy with

rain and gunmetal

clouds.

CVP

Tree of Names, from a Different Branch

Tree trunks of inter

twining names and

hearts grown into

elephant skin bark

reminded me that

this is the time

of year when we

hurtle to the

end but tingle with

beginnings, when we

rejoice at

grass and daffodils

become luminescent

after dark.

CVP

tree of names

have you ever climbed a tree
and wondered at the not
quite top if you are going
to cry because i certainly have
not ever done that.
once i noticed, though,
that the tree was full of names,
and more importantly saturated with
love. elephant skin its bark
was elephant skin and i pined
at its dry wrinkled elephant skin
with my fingernails until its
waxy flesh appeared. everywhere
on this tree, engraved in its bark, its
ever so rough elephant skin bark, were
letters, and each combination
of letters was a love affair. swollen disgustingly
swollen love was etched into each scar
on the trees' rough skin. i leaned back on the
branch, folded into the trees thick arms,
and slowly closed my
eyes and held my heart.

dls

an infinite history of short loves

this one is

not to be published but

here i am

again at that

feeling of wistful freedom

after a few days, or

weeks, never even

months of minor misgivings and

doubts and then a moment of decision,

or occurrence, really, like

finding one's breath after

touching the bottom of the pool or

capturing the flag or

dancing around on the

lawn summer

joys simple joys skin

to skin to lip to cheek to

eye and shoulder that

linger sometimes smoulder

sometimes burn out.

i get soft

quickly but only

for those days,

weeks, never even

months where i hold other

hands and now this one

slant of my

shoulder seizes, a little

fidgety a little untethered

collar slipped

so free from everyone but those

who know i tie myself in

tight hugs, that i don't

run too much, only when the

frontier gets fenced,

only when the

way each story starts

then stops and i, content a beginning

even began, feel

maybe i should

feel more remorse it

ended but everything moves

in circles

right? everything moves

in circles until

two ends

meet?

(february's)

Remember when Sextus said

we couldn’t know anything

because of the shapes

of our eyes?

When I kick ladders out from under me I fall.

There is no equivalent to

“to thunder” for

lightning. We may say

“it lightens”, which technically means

something else but essentially means

the same thing—a buildup of

electricity is released.

I catch a moment, here, there,

between thundering when,

things lighten.

Our very eyes condemn us.

The “I” is not within our field of vision.

We cannot see ourselves.

The “I” is a convenient grammatical construct but

otherwise meaningless.

Everything is meaningless.

Still there are clearings, small patches of

forest ground penetrated by sun where

it lightens.

If you begin with immanence you

end with immanence if you begin with

material you end with material, nothing

from nothing, from nothing, from

nothing, from nothing, from nothing,

from nothing.

And so on.

EWV

Proust on the novelist

For what feels like the first time in my academic career, I have lately been consumed by the reading I have been doing for my classes. It feels as though every book I pick up, from Schmitt's Political Theology to Freud's Moses and Monotheism to Rulfo's Pedro Paramo has been chock-full of pieces of advice; keys to the locks of the mysteries of the human condition.

We were assigned a selection from Swann's Way for my "Roots of Modernity" class this week. Even if you've already read bits of Proust before, I really recommend going back and checking it out again. I am open to the possibility that he's speaking to me particularly as I'm in sort of an anxious and undecided state right now, but I have the feeling that he'll touch all of you. Here's a bit from "Combray" where old Marcel is describing young Marcel's love for reading.

None of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a

"real"

person arouse in us can be awakened

except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes;

the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the image was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of "real" people would be a decided improvement.

A "real" person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, remains

opaque,

presents a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to life. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion;

indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either.

The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable to the human soul, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which one's soul can

assimilate.

After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings

of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth,

since we have made them our own, since it in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall,

as we feverishly turn over the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes.

And once the novelist has brought us to this state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more

lucid

and more abiding than those which come to us in sleep, why then, for the space of an hour he

sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which only we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the most intense of which would never be revealed to us because the slow course of their development prevents us from perceiving them.

It is the same in life; the heart changes, and it is our worst sorrow; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

I'm really into this idea—that somehow there is a reality we have created for ourselves as readers that only fiction can ever fully describe; that we are incapable to discerning reality within even ourselves and our consciousnesses without the aid of fiction and prose. Hope you're all reading tons.

LIL

girl says
dresses submit
notions of
inequity, an
absence of
parallelism derived
from abundance
of ism,
lots of
long lost
loss, innocence
lost, pointing
fingers breaking
bones and
i just
want better
but better
woke up
late and
won't be
in this
morning
so must
keep pushing
boxes envelopes
people agendas
lovers longings
words paper
beetles pretty
pictures of
faraway places.
must keep
keeping on
lingering over
stuttering on
the question mark
wha-wha-wha
what do we do
when we
wake up
late, lacking
most things
abunding in
none, besides
zeal, passion,
and the rest
that got
crystallized into
dark green
stones--jade:
sliced thin and
put in the light:
magic. i'll day
dream my way
to tomorrow, dreaming
dreams of better,
hoping i'll wake
up after night
dreams of
worse early
enough to
sculpt something
from the bundings of
abundance we
have here,
shaving away
the bad, and sinking in
the sunshine of the
good. sunshine
dream of sunshine
sunshine is better
than what we have
here--broken bodies
hushed voices
and lawyers who
keep the tip.

dls

daffodils still dance

and blue weeds sparkle in a sea
of green grass
tiny sprouts of green grass
flowing fields of wild flowers
and weeds seeking
pleasure pleasure-seeking
in a swaying breeze
amid the singing
of birds oh
the birds singing such trickling
melodies tight springing chords
of the sugary sweet
decadence and honey,
dark molasses, hushed
sugar coated fingertips,
that sticky pollen sensation
of spring.

dls