Dear A
The Days of Awe again atonement
and your letter, A, and the doubled arrogant I the sea out of which
the gods crawled Anyway
the last place I saw you I remember it now
the chartered airplane the cathedral of its vaulted ceiling
missing its bulkhead the oxygenated mist
pumping out of its vents in feeble cough-like bursts it was air
we were slaves to it we breathed it
A
The sentiment or the sediment of
a dream like rust-flecks
at the bottom of a wine glass its dregs
metallic aftertaste the drag of the tide
Aphrodite’ frothy after-birth I can still feel around my ankles
as I drift off fingering the necklace of black
Cypriot glass yoke-heavy
smoke-black
A
One eye always turned inward One
eye always in love but
the love impersonal
One late Spring
last Spring evening the pleasant prickling
intermittent
rain
A word please, A affection appetite apparition a possible reunion with the dead in dreams It was a raging sea Out of which the gods crawled
A
The apocalypse reveals itself is itself
a revelation
When I still smoked
I used to dream repeatedly
of setting myself on fire with my own
inattention I was always dropping embers down my dress
I was always putting my self out
It is October and there are swarms
of children dressed as bees
Is this the afterlife?
A
All the exits
are marked are a kind
of entrance Is that too easy?
Obviously some houses only have one
door other houses
many doors other houses
no doors at all
just holes
aching
archaically I will keep
corralling the chaos
my other father tells me until it is sufficiently
tamed I even sweep garbage
into shapes that I like
A
Text becomes breath or your
breath becomes
a glyph scored
into the first frost into the crust
of rime
on the glass of a window and then my breath again
erases it
Always the world over-awed Wedded
then widowed
of our ardor, A we were all slaves
to our appetites then slaves
to water and air
all of us rejects of the famed Heart Institute
All the world! All the world! is how you say it
to be changed
A
To be the last one left or to be the last
to leave the saddest room
always there is the temptation to close
the door
behind me I have become private
reptilian
an asp wound in the spiraled maze of itself
abiding
Alone together, A is the condition
alone in the presence of an other
also alone also in one’s presence
also together
is the condition the reverie out of which
the gods crawl
we form the sea between us we formulate
the sea out of which the gods
we formulate the gods
Dear A Where do I go to meet you now?
— Genya Turovskaya