There are so many things I’m not allowed to tell you. I touch myself, I dream. Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, … Read More →

I was devoured, it seemed, not by a person, a Trevor, so much as by desire itself. To be reclaimed by that want, to be baptized by its pure need. That’s what I was. […]  […] Is that too much to expect? That I would … Read More →

Imagine this: You’re driving. The sky’s bright. You look great. In a word, in a phrase, it’s a movie, you’re the star, so smile for the camera, it’s your big scene, you know your lines. I’m the … Read More →

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight, All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, Desolation in immaculate public places, Lonely reception room, lavatory, … Read More →

Translated by Daniel Weissbort, appears in Twentieth Century Russian Poetry: Silver and Steel […] I care nothing for battle odes, The enchantment of elegiac conceits. For me, all poetry must be malapropos, Not as people … Read More →

Erik Satie never used to open the letters he received, but he always answered them. He would check the sender’s name and address and write a reply. After he died, his friends found all those unopened letters and some felt … Read More →

From the window, a boat in the bay, but still I stay. I keep unlacing your boots, checking your mouth, looking in your dark places for bites. A cat’s cradle crowds the sky. There is a difference between dying and wanting to die, … Read More →

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to … Read More →

After the many-colored but mostly blue Seasons of our two solitudes—the hours Of longing and the flight from longing, the years Spent remembering as if memory were true— We stand together on a balcony Above the city of losses, the … Read More →

Insatiable April, trees in place, in their scraped-out place, their standing. Standing way. Their red branch areas, green shoot areas (shock), river, that one. I surprised a goose and she hissed. I walk and walk with cold hands. … Read More →

Childhood? Which childhood? The one that didn’t last? The one in which you learned to be afraid of the boarded-up well in the backyard and the ladder in the attic? The one presided over by armed men in ill-fitting uniforms … Read More →

And if you should leave me I would say that the ghost Of Cassandra Has passed through My eyes I would say that the stars In their malice Merely light up the sky To stretch my torment And that the waves crash On the shores To bring … Read More →

Be nobody’s darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm. Watch the people succumb To madness With ample cheer; Let them look askance at you And … Read More →

Each time I pass under your window I am struck by the fragrance that still floats through your house. Each time I pass the cemetery I am pulled back by the strength that still blows through your bones. Read More →

i love you dad, i say to the cat. i love you dad, i say to the sky. i love you dad, i say to the mirror. it rains, & my mom’s plants open their mouths. my dad stays on the couch. maybe the couch opened its mouth & … Read More →

Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and … Read More →

I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand on its dangerous banks and watch it carry with it every twig every dry leaf and branch in its path every scruple when we see it so swollen with … Read More →

Whoever writes the scripts plays games with them: It’s me all right, very intensely me but I’m in some different stories from the daytime ones and you’re there too—I’d know you anywhere— but it’s … Read More →

We aren’t now so badly situated to face up to the truth of these just sentences. There’s a good chance they will turn disastrous. Perhaps the condition of clairvoyance which they demonstrate was much less a gift of … Read More →

Life turned pale, a violet knowing nothing of a second bloom. At times a thorn would emerge pathetically to prick the sun. Point zero has struck in the sky, no gong could have announced it. Like the dead awakening elsewhere, the … Read More →

Sometimes I Pretend I’m not me, I only work for me. This feels like a secret motor chirring inside my pocket. I think, She will be so glad when she sees the homework neatly written. She will be relieved someone sharpened … Read More →

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which … Read More →

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening … Read More →

Every time your grief cries, you pick it up, cradle it like a newborn. But your pain isn’t precious, not your life-long responsibility. For each doting moment, your soul refuses to sing for days – and the world needs … Read More →

If this is the truth, I want it. Listen: I have wasted my little life— on spectacle, on golden lies, on dust. I know now what your hands knew when you did this: Love is the daily bread, the make-it-work. Touch me till this world … Read More →

it is your almost birthday. you are reading richard siken, which is to say you are homosexual & panicked by your existence. you have ice cream for breakfast & cry into the evening. you tell your mother im sorry, ill pay … Read More →

We don’t know how to say goodbye, We wander on, shoulder to shoulder Already the sun is going down You’re moody, and I am your shadow. Let’s step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead Why are we so … Read More →

From the pale silence of morning and the din of afternoon. From the flight into darkness of those I continue to love. From my inarticulate body and the syllables that clog my mouth. From having to say “nothing,” when a … Read More →

I say, ​I promise I won’t do anything awful, and he says, ​you are something awful, but I’m keeping you anyway. does that make me your bad thing? your wild thing? something worth hunting across the county? you want to kill … Read More →

Love, today my lip has slipped on your name like a foot on the last step… Now the water of life is spilled and the long stairway must be climbed again. I have traded you, love, for words. Dark honey fragrant in diaphanous vases … Read More →

I’ve loved you like a man loves an old wound picked up in a razor fight on a street nobody remembers. Look at him: even in the dark he touches it gently. Read More →

You’re here. We Breathe the same air. Your presence here is like the city, like quiet Kiev wrapped in sultry sunbeams there outside the window. It hasn’t slept its sleep yet, but struggles in its dream, unconquered. It … Read More →

Deliberately, long ago the carcasses of old bugs crumbled into the rut of the window and we started sleeping here Fresh June bugs batter this June’s screens, June-lightning batters the spiderweb I sweep the wood-dust from the … Read More →

Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, … Read More →

I saw them hiding in the yellow field, crouching low in the varnished dark. I followed them pretending they were me because they were. I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and … Read More →

You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live … Read More →

as in, I wish anything I’ve lived through would finally end. As in, I wish I could say what the other side of grief looks like but I’m still wading through the relentless center of it. As in, I’ve removed … Read More →

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the … Read More →

When they say Don’t I know you? say no. When they invite you to the party remember what parties are like before answering. Someone telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate. Then … Read More →

I never understood why my father Prolonged his goodbyes. My mother Would have her coat on, waiting by the door, My brothers and I bundled up and ready to leave. But he always had to have one more drink, One more laugh, one more … Read More →

How quickly we’re skimming through time, leaving behind us a trail of muffin crumbs and wet towels and hotel soaps like white stones in the forest. But something’s eroded them: we can’t trace them back to that meadow where we … Read More →

When all else fails, fail boldly, fail with conviction, as a hammer speaks to a nail, or a lamp left on in daylight. Say one. If two does not follow, say three, if that fails, say life, say future. Lacking future, try bucket, … Read More →

I am torn in two but I will conquer myself. I will dig up the pride. I will take scissors and cut out the beggar. I will take a crowbar and pry out the broken pieces of God in me. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, I will put Him together … Read More →

“If you wish to move your reader,” Chekhov said, “you must write more coldly.” Herakleitos recommended, “A dry soul is best.” And so at the center of many great works is found a preserving … Read More →

When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes. He memorizes the wrecked metal details, ____the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. Once, while driving, he told me … Read More →

Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school … Read More →

If it’s any consolation, when your wife took me in her mouth, I closed my eyes and pretended I was a piece of wedding cake. I was the instigator, bringing her flowers so often her co-workers nicknamed me carnation hands. At night, … Read More →

You might as well haul up This wave’s green peak on wire To prevent fall, or anchor the fluent air In quartz, as crack your skull to keep These two most perishable lovers from the touch That will kindle angels' envy, scorch … Read More →

I Don’t Want to Lose I don’t want to lose a single thread from the intricate brocade of this happiness. I want to remember everything. Which is why I’m lying awake, sleepy but not sleepy enough to give it up. Just now, a moment … Read More →

Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. The tinder cries. The indelible smell … Read More →

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty … Read More →

I am learning to abandon the world before it can abandon me. Already I have given up the moon and snow, closing my shades against the claims of white. And the world has taken my father, my friends. I have given up melodic lines of … Read More →

To my daughter I will say, ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’. Read More →

I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I … Read More →

Not all days. But most days I do. Most days the garden’s almost enough: little pink flowers on the sage, even though the man said we couldn’t eat it. Not this kind. And I said, Then, gosh. What’s the point? The flowers themselves, … Read More →

I am going to fail. I’m going to fail cartilage and plastic, camera and arrow. I’m going to fail binoculars and conjugations, all the accompanying musics: I am failing, I must fail, I can fail, I have failed the way some women … Read More →

I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed from your great lips. It’s worse than a barnyard. Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece … Read More →

It is more onerous than the rites of beauty or housework, harder than love. But you expect it of me casually, the way you expect the sun to come up, not in spite of rain or clouds but because of them. And so I smile, as if my own … Read More →

I’ve done that. Dive into someone’s arms. Or body perhaps. Or perhaps the space where I thought a body should be, falling into nothing, not being held, in the end. And yet falling still. I’ve cried out more than once, this being … Read More →

The summer my cousins return from Nairobi, we sit in a circle by the oak tree in my aunt’s garden. They look older. Amel’s hardened nipples push through the paisley of her blouse, minarets calling men to worship. When they left, I … Read More →

Your daughter is ugly. She knows loss intimately, carries whole cities in her belly. As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her. She was splintered wood and sea water. They said she reminded them of the war. On her fifteenth … Read More →

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember. I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage. Then the almost unnameable lust returns. Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention, the furniture … Read More →

But yes there are good things, too. Don’t think my vulnerability precludes me from small felicities: a very cheesy egg, like warm sunlight on my tongue. Listening to Balmorhea’s Bowsprit alone in my apartment, barefoot, eyes … Read More →

Isn’t the moon dark too, most of the time? And doesn’t the white page seem unfinished without the dark stain of alphabets? When God demanded light, he didn’t banish darkness. Instead he invented ebony and crows and that small mole … Read More →

Dear C., I know what you mean by life being intolerable. It is a weight you carry. It comes and goes. I have had times of euphoria though, which is a goddamn jolt of joy to the system, but it is quite painful once you’ve come down … Read More →