John Luna
Sheer curtains of the forest
(David Schnell paintings; Piranesi prints; Victoria Frolova cooking; effects of malnourishment on the body over time)
Sheer curtains of the forest surrounding semi-rural homes are pierced by spears of painted light; everything is an object of affection under construction, an invernal vernissage alive in the grave.
September 101: Ferns are primeval; coffee is short, bitter and good; the kitchen stays warm only for a second or two. A tuxedo cat is slinking [home] along a stone wall (things in crossed-out italics are ruins.) Italics left intact are settlements amid things. Lately, a dead ampersand snakes its way beneath my feet. Time’s self I once observed in the dust of ancient ivory roots as they were destroyed comes back again, as always deep underwater in this northern Pacific coast diluvian morning. The landscape
of the island (a spellbound book) had been made in the springtime, veiled in bright green, seeming before us. The Angel in the ampersand (see how it loops? A dead garter snake by the side of the road… ) As you departed, I called out, “say a goodbye hymn from me!” It becomes hymnal in the shadow just behind where the sun has struck the word (a [Mr.]) Mister Hymn. We pretend to know one another so well — but have you ever found yourself vaguely uncomfortable with the convention
of actors playing multiple roles in a play? The voices of disorders fill one whole floor of the house. In answer, I will bake bread, make borscht. We must restore the tissues of your heart muscles.
Space between eclipses
(An astrology of anxiety; internal argument dialogue; Sting about Pinochet; Odas Elementales of Neruda; the Mexica.)
Space between eclipses is where the end and the beginning fit. There you will find me tethered to an old ivy, or a bookstore we used to go to. This negative resistance you give me is pure gold…I can cut the old world-serpent of a leaky garden hose into so many separate colonies; each possesses its own momentum — like brushstrokes, they seem to swim away & through along wet grasses. Time for us to leave this space, and there is something ceremonious about dropping them into the black trash bag one by one: rustle-rattle of respect in the snare drum of a funeral quoted in a singer’s threnody. Picture all of 121 poems stripped of everything other than the animal. Out of the mouth. Out of the
world. Moving impossibly slowly. You will see, as you would with a toy that never stopped being a puzzle (it was never a toy) how these eclipses as redactions of the spells of looking are a double negative, ensuring grace. Poems as passengers of water became rounder when I cut them… I never know why until you do. I want them to be my tomatoes, my suit of clothes, or thread. My chestnut on the ground. But as ruins they are prayers in an apocalyptic wheel — a death by unfinished knots.
Each object in a wasteland-basement fits to be tied into a new world serpent of garbage made of art, for an old republic that needs sacrifice to maintain its amazement. Desire beyond reason. Now love.
Author’s Note
On the notes after the titles relate to reading: here is a passage from Walter Benjamin’s essay, “Unpacking my Library.” that I like:
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?
Thinking of the circumstances of Benjamin’s death in flight, his writing about the packing and unpacking of his library seems horribly poignant, but also makes me think about the present state of memory. Post-pandemic especially, we’re used to being unsettled in almost every sense of the word, and distrust our ability to remember clearly and, especially, chronologically. Is his acknowledgement of a house made of chaos especially relevant now?
These poems accommodate chaos in memory. They are the product of a practice of reading back into things that were read, overheard, watched, walked alongside, and otherwise absorbed… As in a song, a painting, a scrap of conversation long since detached from its context and carried for days, months or years before being found a second time, aligned and offered to the flow of the poem’s becoming.
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