The items you sent
priority
are cast out
used DVDs
aged plastic waste
musicals in black and white
the logic of you
hateful literature
twisted philosophies
philosophies twisted
classical CDs
used decorations
everything fake
used
unuseful
your smell in the box
familiar
despair
isolation
paranoia
you forgot who I am
or you wouldn’t have sent
a holy bible
I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
a long black hair tangled in the dirt.
Gilbert, Jack. Collected Poems, Knopf, New York, 2012: 139.
Once there was a horse, and on the horse there was a rider. How handsome they looked in the autumn sunlight, approaching a strange city! People thronged the streets or called from the high windows. Old women sat among flowerpots. But when you looked about for another horse or another rider, you looked in vain. My friend, said the animal, why not abandon me? Alone, you can find your way here. But to abandon you, said the other, would be to leave a part of myself behind, and how can I do that when I do not know which part you are?
Glück, Louise. Faithful and Virtuous Night, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2014: 59.
truthfront 