Hommage à Professeur Tryphon Tournesol

Poem by Cola Hines

Secret secret

our fictions become real

don’t say that you said 

you need to become 

an admirer or else 

you are lost — what you prize 

above all else is 

clarity — but what you 

must have is harder 

to determine

flagrant moonlight

craving for peacocks

air pouring down

horrific mofo

or no one; the problem

always sticking to

what’s determined

or imagined; you shouldn’t 

do that, you’re a tool

following nacre

when you know it’s uncool

to insist on continuity

in this night curiously 

without coyotes

they overdid it last time

day decanted

the nothing that happened

reality and dream

while you’re away

photo by Taylor Silk

From the long overdue (re)readings (IX)

I have heard them all. I do not have a favorite.  I do not know what they mean. Though "Cake" sounds to my ears like the English name "Kate." A "Kate" who is good enough for GertrudeStein to eat is a "Cake," I say to myself and smile. Bão would be proud. "Slip your own meanings into their words," he said, a bit of advice that has saved me. Language is a house with a host of doors, and I am too often uninvited and without the keys. But when I infiltrate their words, take a stab at their meanings, I create the trapdoors that will allow me in when the night outside is too cold and dark. When I move unnoticed through the rooms of 27 rue de Fleurus, when I float in a current swift and unending, and I hear Miss Toklas offering to GertrudeStein, "Another piece of Cake?" I can catch my breath and smile.

— Monique Truong, The Book of Salt, pp. 155-56

sonnet by Cola Hines

you might say (she did say) it’s a pleasure

(and a treasure) exotic and certain as death

(and as original) — that’s why we keep quiet.

what do you want me to talk about. How about

the exhausted, 'ulcerous poodles and pekes

on the promenade,' the backlit colored-glass mural 

of the waves. What do you want me to remember?

Start at the beginning. I am too tired to say. Toot

toute down the hallways. You left your door open in

those days. I was always frightened of the next bright

smile, the next normal thing. I stayed in the elevator.

When we kissed, I thought how long before she needs

to take a breath? And we went beyond what we knew

and circled back, outwitting ourselves. Like cigarettes,