TEN AM IS WHEN YOU COME TO ME

LOUISE BOURGEOIS

HEART AND SOUL NEBULAS

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...

Nameless for Millennia

the Venus of Willendorf was figurative

first and foremost,

a figure of the ripe fat flesh folds:

On the first night, he told her,

“You smell like a cookie.”

Her embouchure pushes through and the focus of her gaze intercepts breath.

“How I want to bite you.”

See the sand colored dunes that drift and shift and cover grasses with rolling, spreading motions.

See the accumulation

and the rondure of the hills,

soft curvature,

totality of rotation that comes under the pressure of a flat palm pushing down.

I see the moon

and its tenderness has tilted me.

I see the moon and its face turning towards me,

turning off to infinity,

turns its face to face me

turns away to infinity.

Funnels her river there, the current leaks tide

her nipples peaking from the water's bed

dip between the rustling grasses.

A soft hand parts where the mud feels cold

slits the silt open like an envelope,

wet folds with tongue

are pressed firmly to send her off and away.

Corporeal undulations echo over eternity.

However,

the thread of her corn rowed head

is a hand basket afloat in oblivion.

Even at the party, nameless, navel gazing,

he asked her, “so what is it with the constant self-reflexivity thing?”

Her gaze focused on the fat lady's thighs.

He called her Venus as if she'd been missing for millennia.

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If you love the sea by Terayama Shuji

If you love the sea


There are those who love the sea, and yet the sea is not a lover
The Sea is "La mer," in French, a feminine noun.

Whatever you write
upon water
will eventually
disappear.


However,


I am a poet who writes upon water.
I write love on water.


Even if the poems I write on water
disappear
each time I return to the sea,
I recall love.

And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers

And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning

THE STORY OF THE FIRST GRASSHOPPER

Francesco de Mura
Aurora, goddess of the morning and Tithonus, Prince of Troy Unknown
Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Napoli


IN a country that is far away there once lived a young man called Tithonus. He was strong and beautiful. Light of heart and light of foot, he hunted the deer or danced and sang the livelong day. Every one who saw him loved him, but the one that loved him most was a goddess named Aurora.

Every goddess had her own work, but the work of Aurora was most beautiful of all, for she was the goddess of the morning. It was she who went out to meet the sun and to light up his pathway. She watched. over the flowers, and whenever they saw her coming, their colors grew brighter. She loved everything beautiful, and that is why she loved Tithonus.

"Many a year have I roamed through this country," she said to herself, "but never have I seen such bright blue eyes as those. O fairest of youths," she cried, "who are you? Some name should be yours that sounds like the wind in the pine-trees, or like the song of a bird among the first blossoms."

The young man fell upon his knees before her. "I know well," said he, "that you are no maiden of the earth. You are a goddess come down to us from the skies. I am but a hunter, and I roam through the forest looking for deer."

"Come with me, fairest of hunters," said Aurora. "Come with me to the home of my father. You shall live among my brothers and hunt with them, or go with me at the first brightness of the morning to carry light and gladness to the flowers."

So it was that Tithonus went away from his own country and his own home to live in the home of Aurora.

For a long time they were happy together, but one day Aurora said, "Tithonus, I am a goddess, and so I am immortal, but some day death will bear you away from me. I will ask the father of the gods that you too may be immortal."

Then Aurora went to the king of the gods and begged that he would make Tithonus immortal.

"Sometimes people are not pleased even when I have given them what they ask," replied the king, "so think well before you speak."

"I have only one wish," said Aurora, "and it is that Tithonus, the fairest of youths, shall be immortal."

"You have your wish," said the king of the gods, and again Tithonus and Aurora roamed happily together through forest and field.

One day Tithonus asked, "My Aurora, why is it that I cannot look straight into your eyes as once I did?" Another day he said, "My Aurora, why is it that I cannot put my hand in yours as once I did?"

Then the goddess wept sorrowfully. "The king of the gods gave me what I asked for," she wailed, "and I begged that you should be immortal. I did not remember to ask that you should be always young."

Every day Tithonus grew older and smaller. "I am no longer happy in your father's home," he said, "with your brothers who are as beautiful and as strong as I was when I first saw you. Let me go back to my own country. Let me be a bird or an insect and live in the fields where we first roamed together. Let me go, dearest goddess."

"You shall do as you will," replied Aurora sadly. "You shall be a grasshopper, and whenever I hear the grasshopper's clear, merry song, I shall remember the happy days when we were together."

aurora and tithonus

Love

— era um mundo de se comer com os dentes, um mundo de volumosas dálias e tulipas. Os troncos eram percorridos por parasitas folhudas, o abraço era macio, colado. Como a repulsa que precedesse uma entrega — era fascinante, a mulher tinha nojo, e era fascinante.

-Clarice Lispector

Clarice was tiny. She stood only two or three feet tall. She had little golden curls that spilled in tendrils around her face and her face was the face of a cherub, plump and rosy. She did appear so that everyone always had the same thing to say when seeing her for the first time, “oh. You are sweet,” and they truly believed and they were surprised when she spoke: “is that your computer?” her sharp, child’s finger pointing at the woman in the bank who blinked in a way that made her eyelids widen and her eyeballs switch to the other side of her head.

Clarice was tiny because at that point she had only been in the world for a few years. Clarice’s parents took her to the beach. They took Clarice to the beach all the time. The water was a dull turquoise. The red tides cluttered the white sand with broken shells and washed up stars. They dressed her in a blue suit with pink and orange ruffles that floated up around her fat cherub thighs when she sat in the thick, salty water. She was thirsty. She was a jellyfish caught in a hot little tide pool left at noon, abandoned by the sea momentarily until it came to lap her back up again, to rock her in the waves with all of the other fishes instead of drying out alone underneath the sun. She wanted so badly to drift about in that ocean.

silly to forget what is sittin in your own backyard

Katherine Ann


A poor poet
divining Gail

The baby looked toward me
and I was born—
to sound, light
lift, life
beyond my life

She wiggles her toe
I grow
I go to school to her
and she to me
and to Bonnie




Poet's work

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoff
from this
condensery












My Life by Water

My life
by water—
Hear

spring's
first frog
or board

out on the cold
ground
giving

Muskrats
gnawing
doors

to wild green
arts and letters
Rabbits

raided
my lettuce
One boat

two—
pointed toward
my shore

thru birdstart
wingdrip
weed-drift

of the soft
and serious—
Water

*

Far reach
of sand
A man

bends to inspect
a shell
Himself

part coral
and mud
clam






Lorine Niedecker lived in Wisconsin.



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