She does not know that one does not share a stranger's table,
or that if one must there is a rule
of silence. We share nothing like a language,
but teach each other bits and pieces
of our ignorance: Hello. Please.
How are you. Hey boys, how's it going.
Around her neck like a soldier
she wears a card which reads
This document does not confer
The right to travel. She flips it over,
shows a picture of a different self,
dazed, an airplane behind her. She covers
part of her given name with a nail.
Luli, she shortens herself.
In English, flower. Beautiful,
she teaches me, as if it were
an important word to know.
She presses her cheek to mine
in parting, as if we stood beside the river
named, in the language of that place,
beloved.
Down in bed with a sinus infection. Writing by reading into my tape recorder. Strange and exciting how not going through the page changes words -- I recommend all poets try this occasionally. Er -- the tape recoder, not the sinus infection.
Good news today: PRISM international took three poems from Ghost Maps: "Dragon's Teeth," "No History," and "Linger." Getting into Prism has been on my wishlist for a long time.
The river named beloved is the Ljubljianca, incidentally. I'm reading old journals; this one from several years back, during the Kosovo crisis.
