Elaine Equi, “The Objects in Japanese Novels”

Empty cages outline
the periphery of a named thing.
Their emptiness shines
like lanterns on virgin snow.
A few flakes swirl up,
caught—as scenic views
are caught in parts of speech,
where wishes and schemes
glow gloomy as a shrine,
and hair is a kind of incense.
Here, even abundance is delicate
with a slender waist.
And sorrow, embarrassment, disgust
can be aestheticized too
if surrounded by the right things—
a refreshing breeze, a small drum.

From Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems. Equi will be reading tonight at Marymount Manhattan College with fellow poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, in a National Poetry Month event sponsored by the Academy of American Poets.

5 April 2007 | poetry |

Jillian Weise, “Incision”

The nape of my neck is a tell.
Otherwise you wouldn’t notice
with the layers of clothes: shirt,
vest, scarf, coat.

Undressed, it’s a solitary hole
in the middle of a white wall, you
can’t help but stare, what picture
hung there, what of, what color?

It gets worse than this, you’ll
want to see how far down it goes.
The circular incision top and bottom,
a line contained by points.

The seal of an envelope, opened.

From The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, the debut collection from Weise, an actress and former editorial assistant at The Paris Review. Though Weise is an amputee, her publisher advises readers “the poems have a life of their own” and are not necessarily autobiographical. See also “The Body in Pain” and “Us, Like a Bad Mix Tape,” along with several other poems on her Soft Skull Press page.

2 April 2007 | poetry |

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