The Nerve of It by Lynn Emanuel

Author:Lynn Emanuel [Emanuel, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780822981053
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

• • •

Hello, Mallarmé,

And adieu, Walt Whitman.

Whitman, I fell in love with capitalism

because of your commas

in lines that cannot decide

if they are crowbars for rending and tearing or sutures for holding the wound together.

Your nouns are many and alive.

But tonight my tongue is silent,

asleep and . . .

• • •

Born by the sagging branch, the crawl of snow beyond the sash—

Page, I am so weary of your black-and-white.

The whole street becomes an illustration of you.

Why do the trees have too many

syllables or too few?

Outside my room it is 4 A.M. Dear Mallarmé, it’s me again.

• • •

When asked if he would not name it—

Mallarmé looked at the sail of his little boat

about to sail the Seine and said,

This is one page that will not be written on.

I too have launched a craft as frail as—

But now

I annul the jib and mizzen and masts,

the harp of town and shore.

America, you don’t need poetry.

Could we not go back to the way things were:

a page that once lay as bare as moon

above the black lapping of leaves?

Before you were a link in my chain, before I was money for your tolls?

Before you and I were forced to speak?

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