Columbia University trained poet & translator. MFA @Columbia. Author of The Minister of Disturbances (@DiodeEditions, '20) Poetry Editor @pestemagazine
Nov 23, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
And As In Alice
Alice cannot be in the poem, she says, because
She’s only a metaphor for childhood
And a poem is a metaphor already
So we’d only have a metaphor
Inside a metaphor. Don’t you see?
They all nod. They see. Except for the girl
With her head in the rabbit hole.
From this vantage,
Her bum looks like the flattened backside
Of a black and white panda. She actually has one
In the crook of her arm.
Of course it’s stuffed and not living.
Who would dare hold a real bear so near the outer ear?
Aug 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Landscape With the Fall of Icarus
How could I have failed you like this?
The narrator asks
The object. The object is a box
Of ashes. How could I not have saved you,
A boy made of bone and blood. A boy
Made of a mind. Of years. A hand
And paint on canvas.
Mary Jo Bang
A marble carving.
How can I not reach where you are
And pull you back. How can I be
And you not. You’re forever on the platform
Seeing the pattern of the train door closing.
Then the silver streak of me leaving.
What train was it? The number six.
What day was it? Wednesday.
