The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems. Olena Kalytiak Davis
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like summer like summer!
Fat, like Tolstoy’s—
inside the house and out, fat!
Gathering raspberries in a bikini (chto takoe?)
as if the will of everyman were free!
The great Sky over Austerlitz.
The old Oak near Otradnoe.
The Hut at Mytishchi.
The Platform at Astapovo Station.
In the Backyard in a Billabong Bikini.
Each day you did not see me was something
you lost, like, at cards.
After Grass and Long Knives
Suspect enthusiasm—
having eaten pins before—
but that’s what keeps one
quiet, that’s what makes one
stay. Empty is just the first
temporal name
after something smaller sat there is gone.
Then that space
regains its height and wild.
Let let lovers be
light thoughts, just touch
remembered in some not unkind way.
It was all fine.
It was all right.
And now what’s next is
clerestory:
wait become place—and not a cowardly one—
like in some great house made of purest plank,
place to pause, place to be welcomed.
The Lyric “I” Drives to Pick Up Her Children from School: A Poem in the Postconfessional Mode
“i” has not found, started, finished “i’s” morning poem,
the poem “i” was writing about “i” having sex with the man “i” left her husband for
the night before or maybe just this morning.
a sex poem, so to speak, so to say, so as to lay...
a foundation for...
what????????
SEX
i lost my sex/poem!
how did it go?
i know it was called
SEX
something about my bosky acres,
my unshrubb’d down
’bout all being tight and yare
(bring in tiresias?)
did you say soothe?
tiresias, who lies fucking more?
whoops.
who likes fucking more?
(“bring in // the old thought // [allen grossman doing yeats]
that life prepares us for // what never happens”)
today (the color of) my sex
was lavender then yellow
gold then muted mossy grey and green
i bid my lover
lower
i bid my lover shhhhhhh
i bid my lover
linger
i bid my
lover, go
lover, go!
(see!)
i bid my lover stay
away
“i” notices it is almost time to pick up her children from school!
“i” realizes she has gotten nowhere, nowhere near it, much less inside it, wasted another morning, can’t fucking write a poem to save “i’s” life, oh well,
“i” is, at least, “working”.
“i” pulls on her tight jeans, her big boots, her puffy parka.
“i” remote-starts her car.
“i’s” car is a 1995 red toyota 4-runner with racing stripe that doesn’t have enough power for “i”.
“i’s” car stereo also doesn’t have enough power for “i”.
“i” drives cross town listening to dylan, who has plenty of power for “i”.
“i” wonders how why dylan isn’t “i’s” man.
“i” gets some looks from some lesser men, some in better, more powerful trucks, even though “i’s” dirty dirty-blonde hair is covered by a woolen cap.
“i” feels the power of being a single mom in a red truck.
“i” knows it is not enough power.
“i” thinks “i am the man, i suffered, i was there”.
“i” is almost broke, but
“i” thinks “i live more in a continuous present that i enjoy”.
“i” thinks “amor fati”.
“i” notices the chugach mountains.
“i” notices the chugach mountains sometimes look good and sometimes bad.
“i” remembers that yesterday the chugach mountains looked desolate and dirty and roadblocky.
“i” notices the chugach mountains look particularly beautiful today covered in sun and snow.
“i” almost thinks “bathed in sun and snow” but stops herself.
“i” feels that “i” can maybe find, really start, really finish her sex poem tomorrow.
“i” likes the dubus thing about adultery having a morality of its own.
“i” also likes “human drama”.
“i” really enjoyed “i
“i” thought sex was overrated for a long time, then not for a year and a half, and now, again.
“i” gives, well, has given, good head.
“i” takes it like a man.
“i” thinks there should be a new “new sexualized and radicalized poetry of the self”,
“i” knows the “single-minded frenzy of a raving madman” but,
“i” mostly keeps her head.
“i” remembers that “as long ago as 1925, boris tomashevsky, a leading