Thursday, July 28, 2011

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

Saturday, July 16, 2011

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

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

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,