For You, For Tonight, or Help is On the Way
I'm reading tomorrow night with my friend Joanna Herman at Book Culture, near Columbia. It seemed like a good idea to write a new poem.
Easier to talk about
almost anything my sex life, mother
anything Jewish
than it is to talk about my own writing.
You might want to know why. Yesterday, practicing for tomorrow,
Peter and I sat under an old railroad bridge on the river
in Astoria, a place that is really and truly a poem, and he said
maybe words are just harder
than pictures.
Some people want facts alongside
their words. I don't know any facts
even how tall I am
make up all facts and then
they're not facts. They're poems.
Noguchi's house across the road
from Costco, in Queens. Is that a fact?
Is that a poem?
Many years ago who knows how many
psychiatrist named Arlene she
wanted me to talk more about writing. Not my mother.
Go home she said. Write a bad sentence.
Then tell me. I spent a whole week
writing bad sentences. This was my favorite: Spot
was the only name I could think of for our dog.
It's never hard to write
sentences. What's really and truly hard
is to give my sentences to you.