from Flood Diary

poems from Val Witte's Flood Diary, a text that thrills me into a return to alternative journaling.

{marginalia} what means to repair

in this maintenance or regret I’m trying

to forget in reverse to plaster over missing

the greatest game or / observing the peculiar

formation of pairs / the promise of resurfacing

a replay can capture the moment of surrender

before crossing home / if winning meant

removal of the offending agent / an adversary

defeated as understanding unraveled or fixed

recollection driven away or stripped but some

things can happen only once, surprise

and it’s finished / tiles cut out, baseboard

glued and sealed / then paint over what’s

growing there and pretend you never saw it

May 16

Maybe you’ll be the last ~ wouldn’t that be something.

October 26

So strange what comes to you thinking ~ about diseases, viruses

carried ~ I remember the painter, whose poems I am still living

with, didn’t much mind ~ he wanted to keep touching me ~ in

shades of grey, an apartment is a nuclei of vacancy ~ in the shower,

he thought it would be easier if I were ~ water, eyes down tan

lines, a canvas’s natural direction ~ we had something to attend to

~ later, lying, when just making noise appealed to me ~ a body has

a way of clearing things ~ as falling stars ~ sudden starts, the way

surfaces strike each other ~ an object’s contrast against the

background as color ~ collisions ~ we were too new to quarrel ~

but there’s no guarantee you get to lose ~ only to find myself: on

the other side wondering why it wouldn’t stop raining.

and HBO Girls, and a man with the middle name Marcel, "in conclusion, a friendship", and Annas and Adas, and photos of lovely friends, incl Miss Witte laying out our folds collaboration, helping me pack up the casa de luz exile abode over the last couple weekends.