A LOT OF POEM HERE : Angie Mazakis To the Poems that Got Away Dear Aloof Poems, I apologize, first off, for the mass poem. I realize that this is an impersonal way to address all of you. It’s the easiest way, however, to release you at once, and I wanted to acknowledge you in writing, before, like memory, like a camera flash, you soften, fall to pieces, and disappear. It’s been both our faults. You’ve been hovering in the ephemeral, on the verge of becoming something more but always retreating, before I could really make out what you were trying to say. I admit, however, that I kept you isolated in transition. I was entertained by new ideas, taken with their novelty. I moved to the suburbs. I let sleep come as the truest remnants of you slipped away, all the while never truly willing to surrender you completely, keeping you uncomfortably scattered, stray portions of you trailing everywhere I go. For example, Poem-Set-in-Palau-About- the-Guy-On-The-Streets-Whom-Everyone-Called- “Tuna”, you were always good to remind me however incompletely, of my naïve abandon, recalling “Tuna”, his white ponytail and his incoherent speech, and how I would sit next to him on the curb sometimes on the streets of Palau, the trees all wearing hibiscus and plumeria leis, as though someone had just graduated, or married, or returned home. (And now I’ve used that line, which I always wanted to use.) You might have made a celebrated, understated turn when you revealed that I took new roads after I found out that “Tuna” had stabbed someone in the stomach. Had I the accurate recollection of detail to find in you something more than your shaggy, rare appearance― think of where we might have gone. Keep in touch. And you, Poem-About-the-Hitchhiker-My-Dad-Invited- into-His-Car-Who-Held-Him-at-Gunpoint-Behind-the-Steering-Wheel -and-How-Eventually-My-Dad-Got-Him-to-Hand-the-Gun-Over, my favorite line you would have said would have been, “You think I’m scared of that little gun? I’m from Beirut.” Who would have believed us? I’ll miss your pulses of irresolution, how you insisted that I rummage and sift and the way you persisted, stirring lightly behind my ordinary thoughts with a playful shyness. I felt a fluttering on my skin and then looked in every direction for what had just swept by me. I extend a farewell to you, Poem-About-the-Little-Girl-in-Istanbul-Whose-Name- I-Never-Knew, Poem-About-the-Fires-in-Venezuela- Which-Suggested-Political-Corruption, and all you sensitive, frail love poems that made way for failure poems. I tried too hard. I wanted everything.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 18:16:31 +0000
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