FANZINE

History Lesson
for Joshua
 
 
Today I begin time rebuilding the piles of books on one side of my bed simulating what, I do not know, but I know a body was there once, a real one, one coated like skin, one on me like skin, one made up of skin, one all up in memory. Memory, at times, is something I’d rather live without, be erased not from myself but my vocabulary, always getting me into trouble, the way I’ll form words into sentences that I speak aloud. Once I had _______ and now I do not. Once I had ______ and now I do not. If I could offer anything to myself it’d be a push toward ideas, abstracts, a curiosity that is not a part of my history lesson, but, can be of my future. Ask me of myself now and know I’m built from a way I can work out of. Tell me of yourself now and how you work.

Upon finishing Dana Ward’s The Crisis of Infinite Worlds
for the sublime
 
 
I’m drawn to write about my temporary blindness I’m currently experiencing due to, what I hope is not a stroke, but actually a result of the sun reflecting off his pages into my eyes, essentially a reflection of staring at the sun for an hour, which, Dana references as headache inducing. Dana concludes Crisis by referencing a lot of things, a lot of things I don’t know about, sometimes because I don’t know the people or the space, sometimes because I haven’t been as curious as I’d like to be in this world, sometimes simply because I’ve drifted and may have not actually read the prior paragraph.

This temporary blindness is poetic, I’m sure you know where I’m going here. I didn’t want to stop reading the book, thought if my last words read on a page should actually be Dana’s, as my eyes lose more and more focus I move around into darkness trying to continue reading, now trying to continue writing, reminding myself that I in fact do need to watch the keys as I type, so if I do, in fact, really go blind, I won’t be able to write anymore either, so essentially, this poem, could, in fact, be the last thing I ever write.

Wouldn’t Dana love to know this? He caused a poet to go fucking blind. Her mind blown to the point that it decided to shut down, that she had indeed read the last words she ever needed, that power. That bragging right.

Its like that time a knife fight broke out at a reading I had just completed in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I felt a power. Dana is a fucking poet and potentially brought me all the way to the sublime.

Upon the Sentimentality of b. street soulflaki
for m. loncar being read at a wedding
 
 

The transfer of devotion is spacial and at times denoted in the poem. Like how Sweden doesn’t exist without darkness and Dana doesn’t understand truth at intersections. Green isn’t greener and you know that. Dana is a bluebird or yellow bird or typewriter ribbon in the process of fading. So you have to change your perception of a wedding… so you have to wait to have wild hair again. So there’s nothing to silence growing inside your art, fish: dead, women: dead, flowers: exchanged at a rate unheard of. I think we all hear words we think are for us, Dana, and maybe these words are for you, or maybe you, or, myself, sometime other than now, a song sung in bed wrapped around a man I’ve written to. Someday I’ll listen to you, I know I will, and for now because I know not how to begin again without you, I light one more cigarette and hope to be dashing, I write again to you against a shore, I pull at a heart that’s static, I wait for a name.