December 25, 2012

DAY 25: Deborah Poe, Am Vladimir







DEBORAH POE


Am Vladimir


Am hard
am the heavy gut,

stomach verged at urge of television

am binary barrage of image.

Hand. Am the first song’s
fist, uninterrupted, the mainstream
love song. Am straight. Am the child
                                               my fucking became.

Am storming the familiar
sun seeks bodies to save

my kind thus struggling
& deserving.

Am broken.
Was light-crept exception just
next door, was same
like spirit-same, born of & heard.

Spoke English
as if unfortunate squirrel.
Am greedy.

Was holding wife, was angry,
misunderstood,
was ignorant and roof over head
was led to ninety ghosts telling me:

keep words forever for their aftertaste
in Vladivostok —  
of misfortune and smoke

To  groin-calling need,
was living creature.

Crave. Am struck.
Was skin & mowed lawn. Am a part.

Was bored as machine.

Was—why—for supper
and was not rented room.

Was moral & archaic,
Napolean & bush.

Am organic wanting,
was the craving man.





This poem is (heavily) after Lucie Brock-Broido’s “Am Moor.” Words italicized in the poem are from Osip Mandelstam’s poem to Anna Akhmatova, #235. “Poems from the Thirties” from The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (The New York Review of Books 1973).


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