Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Since May 1st, I've been posting poems on Ariel Gordon's May Day Poems blog, along with a number of other Canadian writers. Lately, through reading Sarah Manguso, and thinking of other poets such as Juliana Spahr [see her 12 or 20 questions here] and Lisa Jarnot [see her 12 or 20 questions here] I've read over the past couple of years, I've been thinking on the sentence, wanting to work lines without relying as heavily on the line break; the straight line that isn't necessarily straight. Here's what I posted to Gordon's May Day today, part of an ongoing larger group of pieces.

alexander graham bell


there are laws of thermodynamics
I have invariably broken.

he turned on the light. he invented
the first phone.

he turned on the flicker of what.

for the rest of his life, silence bound him as golden.
I pull leaves off your knees.

will we ever go back to that sandpaper church,
you asked, when your camera caught up

in its digital senses.

I am holding a phone book.
I am holding a phone.

from my office a view
that looks only indoors. I pull & I pull

but the blinds will not close.

you are the architect
of my unmaking, she signs.

so kiss me, he calls,

tens of miles from home.

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