"Gone Is Gone" by Mark Wunderlich

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 23, 2019   Gone Is Gone   Mark Wunderlich

for Lucie Brock-Broido               I was there at the edge of Never, of Once Been, bearing the night's hide               stretched across the night sky, awake with myself disappointing myself,               armed, legged & torsoed in the bed, my head occupied by enemy forces,               mind not lost entire, but wandering off the marked path ill-advisedly. This March               Lucie upped and died, and the funny show of her smoky-throated world began to fade.                I didn't know how much of me was made by her, but now I know that this spooky art               in which we staple a thing to our best sketch of a thing was done               under her direction, and here I am at 4 AM, scratching a green pen over a notebook                bound in red leather in October. It's too warm for a fire. She'd hate that.                And the cats appear here only as apparitions I glimpse sleeping in a chair, then                Wohin bist du entschwunden? I wise up, know their likenesses are only inked                on my shoulder's skin, their chipped ash poured in twin cinerary jars downstairs. Gone                is gone, said the goose to the shrunken boy in the mean-spirited Swedish children's book                I love. I shouldn't be writing this at this age or any other. She mothered                a part of me that needed that, lit a spirit-lantern to spin shapes inside                my obituary head, even though— I'm nearly certain now—she's dead.            Copyright © 2019 Mark Wunderlich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 23, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "In 2018, the poet Lucie Brock-Broido died. She was my teacher and mentor, and then she became my friend. This poem, which I dedicate to her, begins by refracting and echoing a line from one of her poems and then continues as I consider the many ways in which she changed my life. While she was dying, she called me, and we had a conversation that lasted a couple hours, during which I understood it was the last time I would speak to her. This poem was my attempt to preserve the memory of that conversation, and say something about how much she meant to me." —Mark Wunderlich   Mark Wunderlich is the author of four collections of poems, including God of Nothingness, forthcoming from Graywolf Press, and The Earth Avails (Graywolf Press, 2014), which received the Rilke Prize. He is the director of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA in writing program, and lives in New York's Hudson Valley. Poetry by Wunderlich   The Earth Avails (Graywolf Press, 2014) "Domestic Mysticism" by Lucie Brock-Broido "Let Birds" by Linda Gregg "Tomb in Three Parts" by Mary Jo Bang May Guest Editor: Victoria Chang   Thanks to Victoria Chang, author of Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Chang about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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