Tuesday poem #578 : Noah Berlatsky : Someone Else

 

 

I.
Last night
someone else
dreamt

someone else
went

to Manderley
again.

2.
Call someone
else
Ishmael.

3.
Someone else
didn't know
what

someone
else

was doing
in
New York.

4.
Someone else
can't stand it
to think

someone else's life

is going so fast

and
someone else
not really

living it.

5.
You don't know
about
someone else

without
you have read
a book.

6.
If you really want
to hear
about it

the first thing
you’ll
probably

want
to know

is
where
someone else

was born.

7.
Someone else
cut
someone

else's
lungs

with
someone else's
laughter.

8.
Someone else
didn't know
someone else

was really
alive
in this world

until

someone else
felt
things hard enough

to kill
for 'em.

9.
Be with
someone else
always—

take
any form

—drive
someone else
mad.

10.
Someone else
had the white
gowns

and the white
shoes.

And
every night
they'd bring

someone
else

the white gardenias
and the white
junk.

11.
When someone
else
has a house
of
someone else's
own

someone else
shall be
miserable

if someone else
has not

an excellent
library.

12.
Someone else is
not sure why

someone else
remembers
this now,

but someone
else
is certain

it is
somehow

important.

13.
Jack,
you're dead now.

You can't hear
someone else
any more.

14.
I know it's only
someone else

reminding
someone else.

___

 

Text adapted from:
1. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
2. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
3. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
4. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
5. Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
6. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
7. Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville
8. Richard Wright, Native Son
9. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
10. Billie Holiday and William Dufty, Lady Sings the Blues
11. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
12. N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
13. Mickey Spillane, I, The Jury
14. Li-Young Lee, Behind Your Eyes

 

 

 

 

Noah Berlatsky (he/him) is a freelance writer in Chicago, except when he is someone else. His first published chapbook is It's Fab (Origamic Poems Project). He has a poetry collection forthcoming from Ben Yehuda press and chapbooks from above/ground and LJMcD Communications. He tweets too much at @nberlat and scribbles longer at Everything is Horrible.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan