Acerca del autor

Eileen Myles was named the 2010 Shelley Memorial Award winner, with Kenneth Irby, by the Poetry Society of America, received the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction for her novel Inferno. She has published over a dozen books of fiction, poetry and plays and has been a major figure in New York's literary scene for decades.

Fragmento. © Reproducción autorizada. Todos los derechos reservados.

SORRY, TREE

WAVE BOOKS

Contents

UNTITLED.............................1NO REWRITING.........................4FIFTY-THREE..........................12FOR JORDANA..........................14LODOVICO.............................16EACH DEFEAT..........................21OOH..................................23MOVIE................................24UNTITLED.............................25THERAPY..............................26DEAR ANDREA..........................27DEAR ANDREA..........................28DEAR ANDREA..........................29DEAR ANDREA..........................30UNNAMED NEW YORK.....................31JACARANDA............................34APRIL 5..............................35HOME.................................38CULTURE..............................43THAT COUNTRY.........................51I'M MOVED............................55SCRIBBLE.............................58THE FRAMES...........................59SOMETHING SIMPLE.....................61NOW..................................62SAN DIEGO POEM.......................64CIGARETTE GIRL.......................66TO HELL..............................69EVERYDAY BARF........................73Acknowledgments......................83

Chapter One

I'm sick of saving my love in prayer books I've been such a greedy wretch

I'm cleaning a window with you I'm grasping the present I'm gasping

that honey that such

light that such a gooey mess beeping lights

I feel transparent I try it again throwing my baby against plastic

I think of vanishing in cream

this storm

after a monster tore down the town left on the doorstep

is us why smiling the world in our hands a rattle such a joke we shake it shake it shake it

NO REWRITING

nobody's going to come in and take my cup of money

sometimes the only no I have is to reverse things

I agree. It's a good place to shit.

This morning it was summer while I staved in I watched spring fade I went out in chill fall and walked my dog in winters rectangles of trash striking our face the wind turning flags and banners into danger man the wind was big in this fragmented city

I want to be a part of something bigger than myself not the university of california but it's a start my dad was a gorilla

who did you think I would be

how do you spell univercity it always looks cilly

I will think I will read

I will wake up loving you and when I come home I will love you. Look I bought tickets for the movies for tomorrow night I will buy you a hot dog then you know what

They didn't know I was so great it was humbling now it is fine

I sent her this email about the big awards the paranoia I feel about all the award winners now I'm like king of the losers again I said king king king

it's like genitals I want to show you all these tiny parts

but I'm public public public

I went to the University of Massachusetts and for all these years the city of New York has given me a rent stabilization grant

and now California golden state opens her arms to us

come to mama

I wrote this poem twenty-four years ago but nobody saw it yet so I'm safe

she said you are such a good boy

that morning I had just moved my car today on the blue paper the hell's angels flag is rolled like toilet paper, just a thin stream of tattered flag thanks to the accident of weather last night's wind

and I got back in bed and she called I think the bridges will be closed and everyone was screaming on the roof there's another one no she said I'm watching teevee so I brought her up to the roof with me and all my neighbors standing up there the whole block like history and it flaming

and I met the poet Jason from the building next door they've hit the pentagon someone yelled and I went down to get some coffee and when I came back one was down wow I said to Jason had I let go of you yet I can't remember

I went back to get some more and none were left

I drink a lot less coffee now and I can sleep at night but who could miss the flag like fourth of july forever when they move the car I think of it so much when I ride over the manhattan bridge on my bike or my car when else do I look up I never used to notice the towers

riding around Berlin This used to be a wall neighborhood the wall was here, here, here god they're haunted I thought but where was it did I ever know I just thought of it as 70s and suppose it would've been nice to be a poet in residence another grant I never got around to sending in

it was never out my window but I see it out there now

last night I thought about tripping and the way the fags had yellow canvas deck chairs and it was labor day and everyone was gone it wasn't enough to sit on their furniture at their little round table with the umbrella

we had this skid on the other side of the roof they called it the dyke deck

and I remember lying there with our shirts off so early in the morning getting more and more sweet quarts of bud writing with a soft pen into the cheep industrial wood

more rebop

we thought fuck them and threw the yellow deck chairs into the trees in the yard they just hung there and we laughed and laughed woke up thought oh no there was a moment when they thought about evicting us all the men

even the super Bill who had some kind of anal cancer an old marine who kept painting the foyer you called it the building's butt-hole

yellow and green tan then brown by the time he painted it horrible shim silver so bad when I was drunk I thought what a goner and yep he was dead soon

speaking of smells or halls tubes for living through

I think of Belansky:

Little Girl

mainly I think you just have to take the loss into account I don't care if you get it

Little Girl

holes in my memory

sticking my hands in my jeans jackets which ones have the torn pockets I repaired and where do I put my keys now which pants am I in do I remember them?

the bread must be saved wrapped, protected from age because I am poor

and how am I to dress my flesh if I'm not poor anymore how can I protect me from rotting how can I allow

buy a new loaf everyday throw it away wildly fresh

Belansky who stunk who never went out hermit with a beard and the stink poured when he opened his door

little girl go to the store for me to buy baloney and raisin bread and two quarts of milk for years and keep the change

little girl

I'm 28 35 forty even forty while he was still alive some days walking really slow past his door I even knocked l was so broke I needed his forty cents

the day his stinky apartment was empty now for years the clean old man his brother where were you all this time when your brother had a beard came to New York for something grew inside here

FIFTY-THREE

I've already had a lot of them I'm looking at a tree full of tiny balls California trees are different thin eucalyptus more blades than leaves not hitting my face it's a country of tiny leaves no leaves simply balls I desire a big book about this not better than them but their friend. Who doesn't love the text? a book about trees it's like a park except that all its windows face outside you look up at the world & go: oh

a book is a web I suppose saying you come here to go out an incessant trembling bridge which a tree is I imagine a tree my best friend & I love you on one of so many birthdays

FOR JORDANA

I really do feel like I am in some French movie, blam putting down a general cup of tea. The lights are thus and I squiggling then returning to my work quietly squeezed through the day that's captured some way separately not the squares of the cinema but envelopes of affection

spea spep spe

separation

I think writing is desire not a form of it. It's feeling into space, tucked into language slipped into time, opened, felt. All this as a matter

of course of course

yet being here somehow, open

LODOVICO

The persimmons are mysterious; they never get soft I still don't believe these are junipers with their lonely commentary a guy I know standing outside. Up a hill zips a car its taillights on going to work whole parks are empty in the morning silent cause everyone's gone to work worse, & then I got But now I get to stay home. I like a whole long Life of here it's all I ever knew alerting you & counting. You who are blue. I know the niceness of silence. Hugged up & tossled by dog bark, its boxing pushing of the silent morning & then a bird gets in there with some adjusting & a cat taps its head against my thigh & then settles in cat pose in front of a door & a porch looking out & this cat has never gone out. I've been squeezed into morning & I take it. If this is what I can have. It starts with the fruit that never gets old & that's mysterious & next to them are the dead. The people who left me this year; who don't watch color the point of our maze. I've got a pinecone like a pineapple sitting on my table. Interestingly I look at nothing I bought unless you count this house that I sit in. I bought this view. The dead bought out. Of course I'll always drink of Heather who leaned into it. Such at willful wav to go. I remember her leather coat. And why am I standing in June with her family. To think boy she really had money & see her grave. Heather chose to go because of pain. She felt chased out. I also remember her setting her back on fire in a sex club.

Here's the part that's insane. I dreamed about it. Some opportunity for all of us to do so to ourselves, just for fun. It's like I already know fire. I know it inside. In my dream I said no or changed the subject. Because some people get chased out & some people are taken out. I'm thinking of Nancy who's sick & doesn't want to go. I called Bob & he said Eileen I'm dying. Do I say Bye. While the cars keep curling up the road, I'm here.

It's a square of a place when the bed chases me awake and the gleam in the sky that sweet curl of white says no. I've got to live.

EACH DEFEAT

Please! Keep reading me Blake because you're going to make me the greatest poet of all time

Keep smoothing the stones in the driveway let me fry an egg on your ass & I'll pick up the mail.

I feel your absence in the morning & imagine your instant mouth let me move in with you- Travelling wrapping your limbs on my back I grow man woman Child I see wild wild wild

Keep letting the day be massive Unlicensed Oh please have my child I'm a little controlling Prose has some Magic. Morgan had a whore in her lap. You Big fisherman I love my Friends.

I want to lean my everything with you make home for your humbris I want to read the words you circld over and over again A slow skunk walking across the road Yellow, just kind of pausing picked up the warm laundry: I just saw a coyote tippy tippy tippy I didn't tell you about the creature with hair long hair, it was hit by cars on the highway Again and again. It had long grey hair It must've been a dog; it could've been Ours. Everyone loses their friends.

I couldn't tell anyone about this sight. Each defeat Is sweet.

OOH

Baby's apricot with its tongue hanging out I fight the constant

conscious conscious

I fight for you.

MOVIE

You're like a little fruit you're like a moon I want to hold I said lemon slope about your hip because it's one of my words about you I whispered in bed this smoothing the fruit & then alone with my book but writing in it the pages wagging against my knuckles in the light like a sail.

Two animals, bears Her foot licking mine

THERAPY

I like therapy because I don't need my glasses I can sit there naked like the animal I am a beautiful honest animal a landscape of rolling reasons. So amazing that an artist would use a cup for a prayer; and no less amazing that another animal would choose to be one I considered being a cup somewhere in my journey between stars and thinking changing fonts was a revolution standing in my green kitchen Four years I've been to sea so much is left on the old computer things written in that place one night getting rimmed and then she fell asleep spending hours mopping up the next day in place of doing work missing a party after all I say always go to the party which doesn't mean I do some friends left early I staved and the sea spoke next

I love you too don't fuck up my hair I can't believe you almost fisted me today. That was great. I see a little duck's head. Just separate-under the sand. Are you really going to read that. I mean seriously Honey. & the ocean whooshes in. Your jappy girlfriend. K-toom. Pouff. Ker-plash. & rolling your pants high. And the sea hits the rocks & the seagulls hop. Man am I in love.

I'm not trying to turn you on Eileen I'm stretching What time is it. Twenty three before 6. Dear God. Should we feed them? Oh yeah. I'm going to take a shower so let's do it now. Are you done. How about I take a shower first. OK I'd like you to read me the poem when I'm done. What's that Rose. Mm-err.

Nerr Nerr?

I've been alone all day. Spare me the postmodern experimental poet bullshit Honey think hard about moments of love you've experienced with me I want that love. Are we in a relationship or not. Eileen. Are you paying attention

$50 for his ticket $50 for his cat-case

These'll Diesel

You are the candy melting in my mouth. Is that a euphemism For what? Witnessing your love. That's pretty good. Oh I thought you said Hear the candy melting in my mouth. All the people like me are thanking all the people like you. Can we call it bird house? I wouldn't take that away from you. You're like an orangutan. You're like a little brother I just allowed in the bed. Did you have coffee with your dinner. No I'm excited. We bought a bird house today. We didn't get it yet. No but we should call it that. I. M. sweet

UNNAMED NEW YORK

here in the beautiful heat digging & digging for you in your wide & wonderful pause day subway de doggie I was trying to say it writes in bites citizen aged local literary queer cocksucking shop- ping pussy manifesting not will Arnold win if you enjoyed smoking in bars study French expressionism employ your loss buy a car take a course make a college

buy something old again & again & again the sneaker swings I like it here:

it's orange & my hands are free,

The new book was composed by picking shit out of a wave. Wherever they said vague I thought vague

I couldn't help laughing standing at the bottom of my pit. I thought Mark Twain was here in the crater of a giant tomato big artists like error. The tomato Missed.

Being intended to hit god it hit his mother I speak for her.

JACARANDA

What's the feminine of feet I didn't know I could have a lavender tree

APRIL 5

you realize you have no pants on as you're walking down to the pool I have no pants on I say in this very unattractive poem. Your hair is wetly matting your pubic bone & upper thighs. I have to get something I tell my companion and look there are dogs maybe this was just before as I'm playing over the keys of my fading dream. One dog's really nice little the other dog poised on a landing is bigger & I get mad. This one is for you. I'm turning wildly looking for newspaper I realize I'm in one of those dreams. We've just showered everything's perfect when I say let's go to the pool and you agree the warm pool in this mysterious public country that has no head no future. I have no pen I'm in bed the shame of nakedness how mad the dogs made me, the world is inside out sounds on the street (now gone) in my new neighborhood coming into sight

as the headless country full of meaning and you were there with me in my problem

always naked fading truth

HOME

It's not where I write it's where I vegetate

* * *

a bathroom scale on the sidewalk & I step on 145 that can't be true into the face of a girl going by She bows her head don't make me know what you know don't make me see

I criticize the end of a thought

more open gliding on

thru

on the 28th of April heading back

Allen envied me to just have a life [being in Russia as no one not him]

I love her anonymity the marquee from the dentist chair the one little rotten tooth in a building

I write down so I wake up

you probably think I'm like him too busy to be

me but I'm exactly that the tree

coming back in a crack.

Lee Ann I was ungenerous standing on the sidewalk looking for them I thought if I inventoried home it would be broad my eves fling open like a doll's to the virtual space that suddenly. resembles the walls the most interesting artists are large; monsters while the people we know are masses of flowers & when I turn on my celphone I see everyone

holding my cell to the art holding my cell at dinner you guys: we're

(Continues...)

Excerpted from SORRY, TREEby EILEEN MYLES Copyright ©2007 by Eileen Myles. Excerpted by permission.
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