eight poems
olga mikolaivna
1. Where I will go.
The nasturtiums in the vase faded from crimson to aubergine.
Cohering practically to death.
We talk about our respective hungers.
And the truth is, neither one of us seems to be that hungry — maybe there’s something to be figured out still.
What it means to have an art practice, set up a show, write a book, a conversation, a personal continuance.
My clothes don’t fit right now.
The summer’s seasonal abstraction of sustaining myself.
This, too, will change.
The fluctuation of my mind and interior.
And the chatter goes on.
And I will put on my teaching fit and make pretend.
And everyone will be waiting on me, and everything shatters.
2. Crying in the Cy Twombly room.
The point is null.
The nullest of sessions.
I give into headlong stances.
I give into.
The point of defying a feeling.
The defiance of feeling.
The headstrong.
I caught a cold.
I took a hold of myself.
Hermit summer’s come to an end — overdone..
The slowing down again.
The coffee cup again. My absolution again.
The nasturtiums blowing up again. Red.
3. Everything is timed perfectly and not.
I eat cloves of garlic hoping to ward off the ills.
Illness I will thoroughly sleep through.
I had a dream — the dream was fine, the dream took a dimensional stance
The dream had notions of the sick.
I’ve given into my mind.
That conversation made me feel weird.
I need him to stop swooning on me.
Following rhythms and patterns.
My dishes need to be washed, house needs to be cleaned.
This I must do.
I don’t follow the writing practice I teach.
“Vengenace” “Shades of Eternal Night”
Granular pieces, SEPTA’s withering service,, the men at the corner store.
4. Cicadas, water maturation
Chilly morning
Once more
The broken dock, a spine
August falls
Sun weakens
In the light the city
Fatigue and smoke of nights1
To slow down
Moderation spectrum
Spirals
Corossive
Early cobalt
Clears svelte
5. It’s raining like it does. How I like it. And all I can think about is you.
It’s kinda stupid like that. Kinda stupid
To not sit with the unknowing fatality of possibility.
The gray and the window doesn’t shine.
Hungover a little bit.
Someone gave me a “liver” pill last night — to go into overdrive, process the booze.
Juliet tells me she has mice in the apartment. But what I meant was the little head games we all experience.
Babycat curled up in the corner chair beneath the lamp.
The bedroom, an accidental color scheme
Germinating fall.
I want this.
I need to keep track of my thoughts.
How intent and autonomous fate is.
The future is fortune’s form.2 Everything can change.
6. The train car goes forward and I sit still
The laws of motion:
1. An object at rest stays at rest, an object in motion stays in motion.
2. The acceleration of the object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.
3. Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite of the first;
Velocity is involved in a pretense.
The park’s motion goes down, the books collect and there’s nothing in my head.
Hey you, you’ve got motion.
The boulder rolls as the elevator ascends.
The train spills my guts.
I walked some I lost some.
Amidst the augury of the fine disco tech the world grabs me by the shoulders.
Brings me into the sleepless sphere, telling, it’s time. It’s time to flag, delineate and forget what I once knew.
Knowledge spilled.
7. I feel stupid writing something unporous as “freedom is in the leaving of things.”
Words’ refusal to mind in the sun smashing me asking me for redirection.
So this is what it’s like.
I want to leave space for opposition.
Sitting in cigarette clouds.
The finite begins stretching into an oblivion —
Matter’s lacuna.
How many choices will I make today?
I want to leave— mauve.]
Folding towels together at the Blue Hole: the moment.
There must be a rift — a plunge one must make.
How I pick my nails.
You must change your life3
I look at myself, observing the shifts in my face and features
8. Smokers in Ridgewood.
A shadow in my ear
Eyes asunder
Mounting vision
Eclipsed
I see, I look, I undo.
Language a relationship.
A language is a relationship.
Incorporating oneself in its stitching
The sudden, seamless comfort that encompasses the two.
When does familiarity start to bind?
Rupture’s density
That feared uncomfortable place
And so a language; you must take a risk.