Love and Other Poems. Alex Dimitrov
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Название: Love and Other Poems
Автор: Alex Dimitrov
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежные стихи
isbn: 9781619322349
isbn:
Vanishing. A once-orange leaf that’s been
left in a book. The silver handles
of the casket as it’s lowered into the earth.
People’s mistakes. Dark matter.
The sky just before evening.
One boat in the Atlantic.
A handful of balloons going all the way up.
The few places in the world where it’s raining
as you read this. As I write this.
As I read this out loud and somewhere
what is expected does not return.
The last lamp in an old house.
How I’m not sure if I’d like to end on an image
of someone turning it on, turning it off.
Silences. Between the waves and beneath them.
People’s mistakes. People’s mistakes.
1969
The summer everyone left for the moon
even those yet to be born. And the dead
who can’t vacation here but met us all there
by the veil between worlds. The No. 1 song
in America was “In the Year 2525”
because who has ever lived in the present
when there’s so much of the future
to continue without us.
How the best lover won’t need to forgive you
and surely take everything off your hands
without having to ask, without knowing
your name, no matter the number of times
you married or didn’t, your favorite midnight movie,
the cigarettes you couldn’t give up,
wanting to kiss other people you shouldn’t
and now to forever be kissed by the earth.
In the earth. With the earth.
When we all briefly left it
to look back on each other from above,
shocked by how bright even our pain is
running wildly beside us like an underground river.
And whatever language is good for,
a sign, a message left up there that reads:
“Here men from planet Earth first set foot
upon the moon, July 1969 A.D.
We came in peace for all mankind.”
Then returned to continue the war.
WAITING AT STONEWALL
It’s a Friday in New York
and fifty years from ’69.
Though since we’ve yet to meet
or have, and are still looking,
what we’ve said to each other
in photos and films, bars
and basements, returns
with enough echo
to remind us of ourselves.
Those of us who resisted heroes
and sentiment. Those of us
who waited and found neither—
not the promised liberation
in marriage, or the salvation
of laws. How some asked
to carry America’s guns
and did. How others knew
equality was a rumor,
elusive as freedom or sex.
Do you think about dying
every time you have sex?
I still think about dying.
I do think about death.
Or a day in childhood when I saw
the only place I could live
was here. Inside.
So whoever wanted me
had to come through the body.
Which has rarely been beautiful
to me. Too soft and unconvincing.
Too small. I hope the future
is free of god and memory.
I hope the future is
all body, all blood.
And since to be queer
is a way to forgive life,
I’ll take as long as I want
finishing my cigarette on Seventh,
walking up Christopher
and thinking of everyone
who’s yet to get here—
somewhere in a bedroom maybe,
young and bored across
the country, not impressed
by our parades or idols,
all the sponsorship we bought.
I’m late for a drink but wander,
handsome and aimless,
looking for a sign
before СКАЧАТЬ