Cristiana Baik

The most beautiful life possible has
always seemed to me to be one
where everything is determined, either by the
pressure of circumstances or by impulses such
as I have just mentioned and where there is
never any room for choice.
                                        --Simone Weil

i.
And Staten Island is a borough?
Trying not to think of him, as the 1 lifts
overground. 125th Street, the electric
derivations. Evening lightning storms
and sparked junctions, studio work
and blurb manifestos. Avery Hall, late
nights and listen, I’m up Broadway,
seeing Harlem, an end that is
forseeable, too easily replaceable. My
module in a trash bag and a trash bag,
spooked by religious bursts, the awful
Whitman renditions, as friends say “it’s
just a mishap,” held hands but underestimating,
the conflicts of feeling such
way, for him new ends as
here it’s assimilation or alligators, to
walk for first drinks, Brooklyn Inn, as
well as gone, this neighborhood.

Binoculars

Loops
large
lake,
sky.

Lattice,
loops,
light,
sky.

View -
la terre,
la mer,
hannul.

Lake
least,
lie,
sky.

View,
west,
whoa,
sky.

Notes by a Cosmophiliac

vegetation-arabesque.

Non-figural illuminations,

scalloped borders.

Composite capital, Cordoba,

crisp carvings.

What's etched within

each remnant, when/where -

                                  what flowers bloom forever.

Some cobalt blue against some white.

Some tentative illusions

like Tokapi Place and dancing

with Don Quixote. Carved

motifs from dividing

subcontinents. Some regular foliage

sprouting from above. Some leaves

that began work in my heart.

To silk and metal lamella, spun-spun,

on looms as wide as whole sale.

Sense

Yes to a morning yawn, open
eyes from an eerie
dream streetlights flooding
emptied buses. How
vernacular fear can be
my fear of
constriction,
seulement. How one's face
turns factual, how virtue is to
keep a bathroom clean.

How paper scraps
track tires, how his
words still keep. How
things come clear like
my love for heat,
my love for street signs,
my love of dizziness,
and rising inclines.

Yes to say, to come, so soon.