I know it's a bad title but I'm giving
it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight.
- David Berman, "Self-Portrait at 28"
Late August, it is. Endless purple
hydrangeas, the wild of. Promiscuous
ducks all over the end of. A season whose
paint blisters on plaster. That hot-or-not beige
in the husk of sold houses. The urgence of
anything at its finest. The air was so, the
asphalt etc. A fog hanging like theory
over our foreheads. And my notebook
unpacking its baggage at the train
track. As in how much vacation. As in
I hope you did all the things Derrida disavowed
in those postcards. As in manifest and overcome
the latent etc. Per current trends in discourse.
Rob, your book is the finest. My head said.
My head is also for anything goes
until it comes to the unfinished
manuscript. That world one is whole in.
The whole only-writing of it. Of living so
single-thrall. But August, is also. The bruise
of pink chalk in the fist of the daughter
meeting sidewalks in the feet of the son.
And we draw ourselves into a hopscotch.
As if explicitly. My dog Radu eats the rock of.
Barks to mark the stop of. The hops ceasing
like theory missed the pocket it called. And
maybe each game we play is scripted to be
the pseudo that totally changes us, like a
chicken
pox scar in the blank spot and my doggerel
in the margins of. Did I mention how analogic
the ghost ball was? And the green so etc.
The vastness all hot & not scented. The self
of the draft v. the draught. And me at its
finest.
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
