23 November 2022
Grief is not a rabbit. It can’t run this fast.
Grief holds out no carrots. Not today.
Grief becomes the expectation of more grief.
Grief is what the television makes in us.
Grief has no 12 step program, though it’s best to count your steps.
Grief is the foyer to a missing house.
Grief bids us to miss ourselves in advance, like rent-a-grief.
Grief is the red sheets hanging from the line, a corner torn.
Grief attracts symbols like a magnet. Iron shavings crazed.
Grief asks me not to remember the poet, but the poet’s effect on my students.
Grief demands my anger, but I’m too tired. Read my older work.
Grief hints at boundless joy, but the clues are hard to find.
Grief is good in moderation. The scales have broken.
Grief is what you discover in the morning on the news, and then at night.
Grief, double shots.
Grief fills my screens with sentences. Some readers love the sentences; others the sentiment.
Grief is at once affect and sentence. A sob is its ceasura.
Grief begins a list that ends only when someone else grieves us.
Grief comes in numbers. Three football players, three poets, five in a bar, six in a Walmart. A neighbor.
Grief calls back its debts. We need the hero, but he knows he failed.
Grief is a war zone. This was his fifth tour of duty. Nothing happens, then a moment of chaos.
Grief barks orders at us. Wield high heels as weapons. Weaponize your joy.
--list in memory of Bernadette Mayer & so many others
No comments:
Post a Comment