The Weather-Trumpets
sick and smiling he remembers dances long ago on the shore
and the man or woman who gave him the necklace
touching his ear because it reminds him of his father
the lingam flashes on and off
it doesn’t know why I am looking in that direction
hostile light suddenly shifts and becomes permissive
no help from Henry Higgins or Titania tending her blossoms
he must tiptoe across the pink room
must not destroy the shells heroically laid on the ground
anthills and locusts encircled by trinkets
and then a different locale emerges
tout de suite with spotches
shoes and dioramas and halcyon tour operators
Hagia Sophia took a walk
Hagia Sophia took a walk
if a building, a holy building, may be said
to take a walk
its meanings moved
in a circle
after long hibernation
I tried to ignore the building’s ambulation
the edifice itself wasn’t moving
its significance was walking in a new direction
toward me
though I remained on my ordinary route
I vowed not to alter my path
despite the building’s variation and nearness
eventually its new meanings disappeared
I therefore decided my interlude of stasis had ended
now it was time for my significance to shift
in a pattern corresponding to the mutation I had witnessed
Empty Vinegar Bottle
(to view a multimedia reading of this poem, click here!)
I took an empty vinegar bottle
filled it with tap water
and slowly emptied it
searching for an allegory
I settled for a purge
again I filled the bottle with water
and emptied it
this time I interrupted the emptying
to savor momentary cessation
commiserating with the bottle
I felt a passing fondness
the raspberry vinegar the bottle had once contained
smelled like last summer
or like my idea of what last summer should have smelled like
therein lies my untidy story
Posing Naked with Boxing Gloves
not as pink as the actual purchased hothouse flowers
waiting for no-show acolytes-in-training
no plasticity no carapace
no judgment no amour
despite being, primarily, cream
as if the sweater were masculine
a nude sketch of the twenty minutes lost
under the fingernail on the dream porch
with a sliver through it
stolen time in a shiny booklet
as sung by Vanessa Redgrave
variegated strokes on newsprint
but not the egregious red sunglasses bought in a Baltimore hotel
a pillow formed of words to symbolize breasts
with the correct pronunciation of the singer’s first name
a German 1950s scarf with triangles perturbed the penis
like the storm window I forgot to lower
I never know how to wear my hair
(to view a multimedia reading of this poem, click here!)
I never know how to behave prudently
or style my hair conventionally
or use language or a camera
or wear a white dress and toss my head insouciantly
or wait patiently to be kissed
or understand your disappearance
Yvette Mimieux
Time Machine’s star
riding the film backward to its premiere
I never know how to behave like someone named Rod
I’m not quite capable of 1960
not quite capable of reproducing the loose mark made by 1960
an equivocal curlicue on the empty theater’s screen
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Wayne Koestenbaum is a poet, critic, fiction-writer, artist, filmmaker, and performer. His newest book, Ultramarine, the third volume of his trance trilogy, comes out this month from Nightboat. He has published 21 other books, including The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). His first feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (New York) in 2021. In 2020 he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive in 2019. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.