“i feel like a stranger” (my mother’s brain)

22 September 2018

When you’re drunk it’s so much fun—
Your stories don’t make sense.
An early fall has strung
The elms with yellow flags.

Anna Akhmatova

“i feel like a stranger”
says the woman across the table
whose glass of wine is always
the first of the evening.

The second evaporates
in the mind before the swallow
of her “disappearing disease”

the sun sets tonight
without navigational direction
our farmhouse turned
the wrong way round

a frame of blue jays
*peck *peck *peck
a beak of grain
beyond winter

a world away

This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” This year. The repetition compulsion. A question, “How is X?” Or, “What time are you leaving?” (ostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenie

the world made new again

ostranenie (estrangement or defamiliarization) or strangification (the ugly translation)

a term gleaned from the beauty of the Russian ostranenie ostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenieostranenie to describe the poems I love

this woman

X

not a poem
but a plea
i feel like a stranger
a poetic turn of phrase

to myself
a question

this moment a simile for “slip”
unseasonable thaw
ice suspense
betweenfallingdown&catchingyourself
your ampersand hand, bluer
bruised wrenched
arm, broken
open, shoulder

(a verb that would dislocate
if anything were
still
in that place

you remember
Organ Music
the hip bone
connected to the brain
one thing following
any other
like a story

44.4228° N, 78.3541° W 22/9/2018

Painting “Stars & Moon” by Jessica Desmoulins 2013