Essay on Style I.

I care about style but it’s not everything

it’s only anything insofar as it’s unnecessary

insofar as I need it to survive killer boredom

the sad pulp of late afternoon, the sublime

languors of a loved one as he or she decides

to have me or not. Therein lies the paradox

of style staining the couch with sweaty dreams

of being something more than a misty crossroads

where one waits to be assumed or absorbed

by the ether by a higher truth in the margin

the blacked out fields where desire is still

wanting to die. That’s the nature of desire.

It wants to put its fully-involved flaming self

out. But in the crossroads you keep it alive

drinking a flight at the shrine stealing days-

old offerings splayed fruit and silk flowers

you wear it all to become more mysterious

to dress the senile trees in kitschy fairy lights.

 

Real Pastoral

How good it must feel to play through the girls

thinks the dew, the corn, the well-informed blimps    

but especially the handkerchief of dew in my skirt

as I play through the girls leaving divots in vulgar

touch-me-not shapes. Goodbye girls, I’ll see you

later in the place where your wings are trussed 

and my limbs serve the devouring green.

I have a natural stroke that frees maidens first

whose jeans are riding up. Then I get to you,

because it’s only in the swing that one remembers

anything neutral, how showering at night

makes me one of those girls who can batter

a kiss into a ship, the ship into a fort

as I reach what I deem the most foreign land.

joanna fuhrman