#elisa gabbert

[geryone]

Normal Distance, Elisa Gabbert

[dk-thrive]

A leaf falls here here, now then behind the rain, a curtain of rain, the trees in their own time I see now that time falls in layers

— Elisa Gabbert, from "Time Falls in Layers" in "The Self Unstable" (Black Ocean, 2020) (via Mandy McHugh)

[beguines]

Elisa Gabbert

[lifeinpoetry]

I want to experience my past again, but as I was then, doing what I did then—nothing changed.

In what sense, then, am I not living through it, again and again?

Isn’t the past always happening?

— Elisa Gabbert, from "Wild Animals (Normal Distance)," Normal Distance

[apoemaday]

Moon News

by Elisa Gabbert

I read that in January of 1912, “the moon came closer to the Earth than at any time in the previous 1,400 years.”

High tides make the sea extra iceberg-y; ergo, the moon sunk the Titanic.

When you turn your concentration to one thing, you turn your distraction to something else. Distraction as dark side of the moon.

Every photo of the moon from the moon looks black and white, because the moon is black and white.

I resent all this news about the moon. I only love the moon when it takes me by surprise.

Here’s my favorite thing about the moon: A moonwalker said when he’s looking at the sky, he sometimes suddenly remembers: That’s my moon, the same moon I walked on. (To each their own moon.)

We realize the same things over and over, new every time.

We are born not remembering why we walked into the room.

[heartmailbox]

elisa gabbert, from "normal distance"

[violettesiren]

I’ve become obsessed with the idea of a meadow, a meadow I am not in. Yellow flowers are in the meadow. They must be; they are part of my idea of a meadow. There is the yellow on green below, the flowers in the grass, the white on blue above. My viewpoint is in the middle, though I’m not in the meadow. It forms a white line extending out to the horizon, a line that is real in the real of the meadow— When the meadow is real, so is the line. You can think of the meadow as kind. But the meadow is indifferent to human life—even to mine, even my meadow. My meadow with day moon and trickling stream, rabbit and magpie. White wisp of cloud, white snow on the mountain, the meadow a valley— There is cloud wisp and flowers, but they are not for me, when the meadow is real. I’m not in the meadow. The meadow is not mine.

The Idea of a Meadow by Elisa Gabbert

[lillyli-74]

When I’m suffering I don’t ask for help. I’m afraid they’ll come and try to take my pain away.

~Elisa Gabbert