Tuesday poem #213 : Mark Goldstein : Poems for Alice from Medium Point Blues (a work-in-progress)

1

Voice of Alice/ voicing Anna Mendelssohn no other/ arising
out of self/ in mind no mind just/ write this want to read that/ duet
jot down as book –

2

I of now/ where music abounds – entering in through frequency –
sickness no sickness at all/ so push pen/ is soft sound a footfall or
doubling – doubling/ said no place to rest the thud/ of trucked traffic
passing by

3

breath resounds –
amid constant sounds – comes this how against no other/ no home
unwritten in/ -sight lost or forgotten/ so much thought clots the un-
spoken – an old guide/ less a land so named/ than

green rock and shattered plinth/ foretold
by inner selves

4

It breaks
in your hands/ the long break comes cleanly/ splays itself/ before you
some same sake is/ no name at all – the warm up gropes for it/ says
nothing – therein lies the voice/ of things the itch that turning/ softly
sounded page

5

soundsight a-
rose/ itself an ear among others/ reared on breathsong/ calls “Schnell,
schnell,” you’ll go rattling out that canal/ of word’s work thieved –
shuffled off pages/ blackened under nails/ earthwards – kin and loam

6

The E N D of it – this/ hand pushes pen over paper – the clock that
happened in his poems happened in her poems happened in these
poems too – inexorably this/ feeling of coming in of coming/ into
a room where she sits down beside you – redresses herself – let go
of this/ “my” this – you think – Alice turns to you and says so.

Mark Goldstein [photo credit: K. Hill] is the author of three books of poetry published by the award-winning BookThug: Form of Forms (2012); Tracelanguage (2010); and After Rilke (2008). His poetry and criticism have appeared in both trade and limited editions as well as in periodicals and journals such as The Capilano Review, Brick, Open Letter and Jacket2.

Goldstein has facilitated workshops at the Toronto New School of Writing, SUNY Albany, and lectured on translation at George Brown College, York University, and in Paris at the École des hautes études en sciences socials.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Goldstein played drums alongside Leslie Feist and Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning in the indie rock band By Divine Right.

website: www.markgoldstein.ca
publisher: www.bookthug.ca
 
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan