from “[the old soiled carpet of the wish to be Anaïs]” by Wayne Koestenbaum

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 12, 2017   from "[the old soiled carpet of the wish to be Anaïs]"   Wayne Koestenbaum

writing on the bruised body and seeing into the bruise's locked backyard, not psychoanalyzing the incursion but appreciating its scissory up and down   _________               remembering the wish to be Anaïs Nin—   _________               stepping on the old soiled carpet of the wish to be Anaïs—   _________               liking the pullulation of scratch marks and their glistering anonymity   _________                              florid British perfume wrongly purchased for stepfather—the perfume stank so why did I buy it?    _________               the entire sky with a palette knife is scratched turquoise opal— no underlying tint to betray it   _________   a sick tint inundating the marsh   _________   I celebrate mother's sunset or I am cloud making her sunset more inspiringly Turneresque—   _________   to scratch through the page until it dies, and no credit given to the scratcher            Copyright © 2017 Wayne Koestenbaum. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem is a tiny excerpt from my trance trilogy's second volume, Camp Marmalade, to be published in Fall 2017 by Nightboat Books. The first volume was The Pink Trance Notebooks. Aphorism, lament, notation, murmur, scratch: am I the 'sick tint' inundating my own language?" —Wayne Koestenbaum   Wayne Koestenbaum is the author of The Pink Trance Notebooks (Nightboat Books, 2015).  He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center and lives in New York City.   Photo credit: Katharine McMahon Poetry by Koestenbaum   The Pink Trance Notebooks (Nightboat Books, 2015) "Behind Perfume, Only Solitude" by Liz Waldner "Demeter in Paris" by Meghan O'Rourke "Ave Maria" by Frank O'Hara Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038