Author: Nada Gordon

It’s funny, but there’s this dual voice:

Don’t patronize me!

vs.

Patronize me!

The Tuba and the Piccolo

Very seriously beginning to question my own apologies for essentialism while thinking of the TUBA on the one hand and the PICCOLO on the other.

Which could be said to be the masculine instrument? And which the feminine?

This ponder brought on even before starting to read Feminist Aesthetics, a book of German essays (in translation) on the topic.

I am inordinately fond of italics.

My favorite word is probably idiolect.

I am not at all capacious in my interests.

You people haven’t guessed that something’s maybe a little fishy?

And I thought you were smart.

(through) the letters that (we wrote)

so pushing past is out

side-scrolling the binary

over into pieces of

this normal life

or the wished on jets

landing the largeness

of kisses and out of control

the very station of a sadness

the much too much harbinger

of sour notes off of riffs

entirety in its parts-car

rolling on land and the

view of a red sky

windowed through

constellating the big loves

turned up to eleven beyond

one on one below the deck

of clipper ships or fishing

multi-vessel trips in the

south seas motion so

tossed about it all so forth

(the transport reaches its autumn here)

this place is an only once in skin

and the signs of crying

sensate ema(s)culate

vied out for its mate

that is the inside itself

reaching makes

will it matter(?)

up the spaces in atoms of instance

to write the wake it takes to

against thinking tango (now)

the real question mark is correct (here)

drawing lines in

outrageous curves

(here here) close misses closest

which is its of metaphor

built figures in all gory

bloody guts death word play

calling attention with

killing attentions

listing deaths in flaws

the nature is evidence patterns

numb(er)ing ( . . . I’m not as sure as

it may seem

of myself I might mean)

the naming is the maiming

and of rhyme she said as to not claim

any type at all responsible

go ahead wish it ends (here)

a simple

continuance

emerges

anyway

against

allowances

this is my comment

the collaboration is my fingers

(typing)

marking on ever rafters

the limits hanging from

where I watched everything

and you were both beautiful

fluttering (wings and hearts)

we love

telling (each other)

we love

the pretty birds

we are all

and we love

folding is only

(into itself)

the living way

this missing

flying away

as animals

(are emotional anyway)

holding together

the two letters

meets (pressing together)

bodies of forever

this is so

becoming only so-so

as we go together

the virtuoso double-clicks

out on everyone

leaving one well

enough alone

the need (f)or people

dropping away from maps

the terrain that flies solo

this is no more abstract

than a Sunday drive

so you can see

out the windshield

of your own ways

turning winding roads (into)

minding your own lonesome self

to the mountains floating

it seems the horizon

still wants cloud cover

the water everyone will

drink together as the fall

comes (clear skies)

there is still this ugly thirst

MARK

Just put a new poem on prrrowess.

It may still be in progress — I would be very grateful for comments and suggestions on it.

Be forewarned — it’s rather long.

Why Not?

a kind of promise

the talk of a

terpsichorean chance

some kind of

balance and talent

we wondered on this

atopos

apropos of deep reds and dark looks

and we walked around “of course”

everything seemed drunk

when it was

“into the phallic woods you go, girl”

from your funny words towards

“the love of my life” etc.

to whatever we stumbled through

now

here all this dedication pouring out

upon my disk drive I swear to thee

the sort of

of comparing me to this or that

cute bird with “pin-prick wings” or

a “super beak”

flying/singing in a cartoon or computer moonscape

will win you either

the left or right ventricle of my heart

Actually, when I went to Japan I only brought one smallish box of books. It contained a few texts from the essential text list below as well as all of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu(though I still[!] haven’t finished it), Kafka’s diaries and parables, Carl Sandburg’s Rutabaga Stories, and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which is really the only book I need. It’s not from this century, though, so it’s not on the list below.