Day (with an annotation by Blake Butler)

[an excerpt from our Winter 2020 issue]

 

x.

 

A rhombus

turning 

in a mind.

Fire

without a body,

eating:

air into air.

Looking

without a body.

Sun up.

 

 

x.

 

Reminder of a body,

thinking is.

An angle

regarding itself.

A window

concentrating

space,

an optical 

trick

 

 

x.

 

Tuesday

in bed.

Leaves like

coins. 

Combing my hair.

A little bit

of planet

walking upright,

wasting it.

The world’s magnetic

shield is tangled.

Roiling pockets

and threads.

Some

good luck.

 

 

x.

 

Starlings,

bacteria,

floorboards,

what else.

Soda.

Rivets.

Tuesday.

Something

I have balled up

and left

in a corner

of the bed.

Wholesome.

Totem.

 

 

x.

 

A blind 

and deaf current.

A rhombus

today, debating

if it feels like a rhombus.

A scale we have built,

impossible to fathom.

The only magic

number is one.

A slave—

a man,

not me.

 

 

x.

 

Starlings picking

at bags of trash.

What man is not

meant to do, a lot

of people like

to describe.

But

I’m here, I like

to think

 

 

x.

 

The scope of white.

The prism.

I called you from

the police station

on our first date.

I cooked and ate

and cooked and ate

but never got

it out.

The barbed

underside 

of white,

the no-more-

room,

I mean snow,

cup

 

 

x.

 

1890 and an idiotic man

releases 60 starlings

in Central Park

to everyone’s

delight

 

 

x.

 

Colors 

are a delusion.

What else. What

else. Tender fresh

molds, washed

atmosphere.

It quakes.

Hit  

save

 

 

x.

 

He drew out

a circular library

hidden in an end

of the palace.

He wrote music

for a flute, the one

his father broke.

He grew fruit.

His diseased

genitals removed.

 

 

x.

 

It does not mean much.

It is a ritual.

Speaking to each other.

A ritual.

I longed for it.

 

 

x.

 

Sweet slim 

legs of chairs.

You, you

already are

your wife.

Still I

pet your limbs

aimlessly.

You pull 

my hair around

my neck and

fake choke.

You will be

relieved

when you can’t

find me.

It stings.

It is enormous.

 

 

x.

 

Honesty.

 

 

[Read the full poem and annotation in our Winter 2020 Issue]

 

 

Molly Brodak published a full-length collection of poetry, A Little Middle of the Night (University of Iowa Press, 2010); a memoir, Bandit: A Daughter’s Memoir (Grove Atlantic, 2016); and three chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent collection, The Cipher, won the 2019 Pleiades Press Editors Prize. Before her death in 2020, she taught writing and literature at numerous institutions, including Emory University, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Georgia College and State University. An accomplished baker and recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Brodak’s poems appeared in such publications as Granta, Guernica, and Poetry.