manhattan folk: norman rush, author of whites, mating, and (now) mortals (also known as the peace corps author i discovered when hunting for a copy of the satanic verses) will be speaking at the barnes & noble near the lincoln center on june 3. drop me a line if you're interested in coffee around then - it's the night before my corporate internship kicks in, so i'll be overdosing on idealistic books.
i gave barnes & noble a few dollars, which was bad. it gave me a decent women's journal (kalliope), though. not sure how the following ties in with their theme issue ("desire"), but i liked it (go go MFA students gettin' published) -
It hurts to have three goldfishi'm hip to that guilt.
in a five-gallon tank. Two gold, one black.
To lord over living beings with eyes who see
me coming, flutter madly at the surface to tell me
they are hungry. I decide when and if
everything, clean water, food.
They are meant to bring luck
and after two months, I know what it is:
not "good", but the staving off of bad -
the humility of the oppressor who faces
her terrible power every day.
Who tries to imagine trading places
and achieves it, fast as a fin ripple,
but then it's gone and I am still out here
putting my face to the glass; their expressions
are not so alien, we are animal and animal,
but still we do not meet. They refuse.
Especially their leader, the big gold one.
He wiggles and gasps through his gills
bobbing pockmarks in the water's surface
to imitate the spray of food he wants
as badly as an addict, relief
from boredom and confinement.
It works every time. I know
I could wait, for days if I wanted, but I stop
what I'm doing and drop in the pellets,
watch them gulp the floating bits. No gladness wells
from my good deed, only a mild pause in the horror
that eats at me, the knowledge
that I own, possess, three fish.
(elly clay, "surface tension")
at long last, another rejection trickled in. the editor complimented my spelling and productivity ("Well, you've written at least 6 poems, plus those published. Promising.") and guessed at my last name's origins. again, i seem to get more attention for my cover letters than i do for my work - if only job applications turned out that way. maybe i'll tell him i'm a blender heiress when i write back ("Send again. NO promises.").
No comments:
Post a Comment