#karensolie

[trifeca]

[poemarama]

Pigeon

I thought I’d start archiving the poems that roll around in my head. Some tether to my life; some are general fly-bys. Maybe you’d like to read them. I don’t care.

A lot of finding peace with loss and listlessness this year. “Who are you? What of you persists?” Karen Solie’s lines have been rattling around in my head all summer.

Here is consequence, folding its wings on the fence. Here are your chances. After years of moving whatever you do from one place to another in the manner that constitutes your work, you have to admit you know what you think. About tonight not so much fallen as struggling to its feet, gorgeous in spite of what it’s done to you. All is forgiven. The loneliness composed on the road, after hours, off-shift, out of it, or left behind, the vindictive clairvoyance of local law enforcement, protracted incidents represented by lacunae in your resume, strategic negotiations pursuant to the project of getting the fuck out of there, or making the best of being stuck where you were, in those rooms now creaking in a forest of outlived rooms recalled as eras are recalled, their outmoded fixtures and period costumes, motes afloat in parallelograms of windowlight. Who are you? What of you persists? Your life is built on intervals the way a chord is, on changes that alter you by thirds, by fifths, in silences the progression climbs to where each song ends, and the next begins.

KAREN SOLIE