L’Olive: sonnet 28 My tongue cannot resist disclosing all I feel for you, when from you I’m away, but suddenly, feeling you nearby, it says nothing—-left dumbstruck and deaf, words stall. Thus hope makes guarantees while duping me: I am less there, the more I’m in your presence. What eludes me pleases me immensely: I desire that which I refuse to keep. I am joyful by night and sad all day, having in sleep what, waking, will not stay: my good’s a falsehood, my evil ever true. I brood for one who’s faultless, best commended. Therefore, Love, if there’s charity in you, make my life brief, or night make never-ending. L’Olive: sonnet 28 Ce, que je sen’, la langue ne refuse _____Vous decouvrir, quand suis de vous absent, _____Mais tout soudain que pres de moy vous sent, _____Elle devient & muette, & confuse. Ainsi, l’espoir me promect, & m’abuse, _____Moins [...]
Brett Foster
End of Lifed The angels, those constant followers, stay dumb to metaphors, deafer to jokes. Outside firm circles, however, the idea of decay as a transitional state meets with uncommon success. Props and shout-outs to the flesh, the flesh, and the flesh for keeping caps on myth-proliferation, though experts trouble to isolate origins, what wags what. Planets, Virgins, Eternal Recurrence: done it, done it, doing it. And The Bosom of Abraham: don’t get me started. The same assholes who bully us here will bully us there, in much tighter quarters, and management will, predictably, console us with loopholes and pleas for patience. Maybe some species of bliss—let’s hope we can dream—can be found in that queer and crowded place, but where neither release nor hygiene nor the world wide web are guaranteed, there can be no rest. As we speak, exegetes elsewhere defend that extratextual innovation but number-one-requested feature, a [...]
. Late in the forest I did Cupid see _____Cold, wet, and crying, he had lost his way, _____And being blind was farther like to stray: _____Which sight a kind compassion bred in me, I kindly took and dried him, while that he, _____Poor child, complained he starved was with stay, _____And pined for want of his accustomed prey, _____For none in that wild place his host would be, I glad was of his finding, thinking sure _____This service should my freedom still procure _____And in my arms I took him then unharmed Carrying him unto a myrtle bower _____But in the way he made me feel, his power, _____Burning my heart who had him kindly warmed. ______________________________________________ Lady Mary Wroth was an English poet of the Renaissance. She wrote The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, the first extant prose romance by an English woman, and Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, the first [...]
on falling in love I love how you burst through the door and look around. I love how bad you are at hiding the fact that you’re trying to find me— and how trapped I feel when you’re nearby. I love how when you see me your mouth falls open, how another mouth extends from within the first mouth, both mouths drooling, like you want to bite my head off, literally crush me in an extended hug, take me back to your nest and secure me in jelly-like tentacles. It turns out you do. These are just some of the things I love about you, Alien. I’m not even sure of your gender, but in the heat of the moment, does it matter? ______________________________________________ Aaron Belz is the author of two books of poetry, The Bird-Hoverer and Lovely, Raspberry. A third collection, Glitter Bomb, is forthcoming in 2014. Belz lives [...]