litafficionado:

“I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.”
-John Keats, in his last letter to Charles Brown, dated November 30, 1820

The Solstice

by W. S. Merwin
Issue no. 105 (Winter 1987)

They say the sun will come back
at midnight
after all
my one love

but we know how the minutes
fly out into
the dark trees
and vanish

like the great ‘ohias and the honey creepers
and we know how the weeks
walk into the
shadows at midday

at the thought of the months I reach for your hand
it is not something
one is supposed
to say

we watch the red birds in the morning
we hope for the quiet
daytime together
the year turns into air

but we are together in the whole night
with the sun still going away
and the year
coming back

The Season

by John McKernan
Issue no. 58 (Summer 1974)

Oh it’s Christmas time in Omaha Nebraska!
“Almost alive” red lips say through the panes.

His blue eye, his brown eye, his chipped ear.
Wearing a gray wig, missing two fingers,

My father is easily the handsomest mannequin
In the display window at Brandeis and Sons.

At me? His son: JohnJ ? Unassembled I lie
In a crate near the electric train.

See the workers dressed like priests screw on
My head. Lock on my arms. Twist on my legs.

1 am seated in an easy chair. I am wearing
My new schoolboy costume. I hold a new Latin

Book in my hand. A Chicago Bears satchel over
One arm. Yellow pencils in my pocket.

I paste a scowl all over my face.
The “Dumpy Doll” envies my frown.

Father smiles at me. He does not understand
Why the electric train and track he bought for me

Are only a mountain of dark plaster, a flurry
Of dry snow, the thin noise of wheels.

Nor does he understand why the ice skates I wanted
So badly are razor blades across the cold back

Of the duck pond. Nor do I. Fixed
In plaster, I stare. i scowl.

Oh see my hands. Oh see my feet.
Thirteen more days till Christmas.

I stare ahead. I do not blink.
After the new year, they will take us apart.

“1 = 1”

izzyzangwill:

Academics keep writing books about criticism despite the clear fact that things are just good when i like them and bad when I dont