Barry Schwabsky


Children’s Story

There is no satisfaction in telling a story as it actually happened.
—Jorge Luis Borges

Each house
has its over moon

repurposed by sleight of error
if not up in won’t

our endless backlit something
forget poetry a minute

absolutely exposed
and was supposed to look but didn’t

his voice an open vein.


Poem

Indestructible object
burnt in a fire of mind

a word said
touch an untouchable distance

never really to be seen now
your eyes frost over

have we stopped hearing
eyes flicker in daylight

as good as gone.


Everything’s Amanuensis

You always have to figure out what the line wants.
—Henri Matisse

Listen you jerk
you can read that song

while seeing around
something lost in someone’s eye

keep painting wet on wet
to cool in the shade of it

not too important to look
the past sings the present

some weary sky enables.


Bone Trouble

A shrinking whisper
come to collect your ashes

who used to be a sort of tube
of foil filled with memory

as through a distant city
some light would fail

the rubble of a fallen sky

fingers out through false colors
the dream he died to every day

and later buried
in the sleep of resistance

death is sticky with small flat feet
she’d thought of being stolen on his account

some daylight mad with love
wrapped it up in clear plastic

this way we are lived through.



Barry Schwabsky is an American poet and art critic living in London. He is the author of Opera: Poems 1981-2002 (Meritage Press, 2003), and Book Left Open in the Rain, due out from Black Square Editions later this year, as well as several chapbooks. He writes regularly for Artforum, The Nation, and other publications.

 
 
 
     contents     next page