“Beauty" by Ariana Reines

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 5, 2017   Beauty   Ariana Reines

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre                (Baudelaire)   These poisoned sensations have to be Accepted if they're to be Overcome. Looking Up calories on my phone   Not that I'm counting  Don't even like numbers It's something vestigial It comes in bad minutes   To teach my body something's in control Something little & unholy, wrong idea Of information, chiseling a transparent minute Into myself with the afterimage of a form   If I did this kind of thing On the bigger machine it'd be Worse. Worse Things than this are bombing   The world. A terrible Fate is coming to power tomorrow. I'm reading The early poems of Sherman Alexie. Desolation Of secular life. I remember the luxury of speculating All mystical traditions grew up In the souls of a disciplined few Turned in on themselves while under Occupation by tyrants. That was then. This Morning I could see one comfort: to become rock Hard. Could imagine one comfort: To have become rock. I had no Imagination. I had his. I had theirs. "Formalism & grammar are ways to be thin..." masochism Merely thought of, the idea of a calorie Most boring way to feel womanly doing itself to me This morning I was panicking, burning, I was desperate Scanning the body of my bedfellow Its beautiful cheeks & chin & long smooth abdomen My silence growing fat like an old fruit Still making me sick It makes me sick I longed For the wrong thing I longed for death. I dreamed of stone sent by hand   19 January 2017            Copyright © 2017 Ariana Reines. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "On the eve of the inauguration I found myself writing poems about my father and doing regressive things that I don't in fact do—in this case, Googling the calories in foods, knowledge which, once I'd attained it, I didn't do anything with, though somehow it still did itself to me. What is information you don't precisely use? A tiny opportunity to suffer needlessly perhaps. Baudelaire's 'La Beauté' is a poem that has always haunted me.  What a strange thing for Beauty to do—liken her beauty to 'a dream of stone.' It's so easy—too easy—to be swallowed by the nightmares of the opposite of beauty in these times. Thank heaven for poetry to keep us living and moving today of all days." —Ariana Reines   Ariana Reines is the author of Mercury (Fence Books, 2011). She is a visiting critic at Yale University and also works as an astrologer. She lives in Queens, New York. Poetry by Reines   Mercury (Fence Books, 2011) "If They Are a Silueta" by Melissa Buzzeo "Eminent Victorians" by Rebecca Wolff "The Truth the Dead Know" by Anne Sexton 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. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. 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