Our new poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Kit Schluter for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
* * *
Detail of Sophia Narrett’s “Stars Align” (2014), embroidery thread and fabric, 53 x 33 in (photo by Jillian Steinhauer for Hyperallergic) (click to enlarge)
A moment when nobody on Earth is speaking
They’re making me balance a plate on my nose
like a seal
but they won’t stop crying
aerial view of a town without color
night of brass & humiliation
the walls are crumbling
we’re in a garden the sky is falling
the plate is hard to balance
scattered with lead shot
it came from nowhere at all
it isn’t a plate it’s too many days
if it falls down
(all the little fingernails)
they won’t hold their candles by my window anymore
that time were slicker than an iris
I loosen my throat prick my tonsils till they burst
my legs are not wicks rising into fire
spell my name twice your ear to my skin
be your own wick no one is behind the fence to talk to
spell my name backward
where is my mother
fix her headache
spell her name inside out
in the corner of some grassy gymnasium
in the concrete zone behind some apartment
distractions: the spider glassing my trachea
the glazier frosting my retina
no one is talking tonight no not on Earth
forget it until you forget about it
I only want to be sung to like anyone
Coign of Vantage
Take my word for it: the salty blue sphere
is the most laughable shape in all of geometry
because, when its shadow arrives, mopey at the threshold,
an unaccompanied poetry spills out—but it’s all been said before
on a broadside, in luscious, azure paragraphs
where clause after clause apportioned ethical contemplation
in a fantasy so habitual it resorted to the asexual:
tears of laughter stream from a fuzzy drupelet of blue paint
as I eavesdrop on the four older men holding court at the round table
as their words turn to pollen, clouding out their mouths
with the tedium of explaining the difference of a 0 and an O
to someone who’s never before seen Roman script.
* * *
Kit Schluter is translator of Marcel Schwob’s The Book of Monelle, Jaime Saenz’s The Cold, Amandine André’s Circle of Dogs (in collaboration with Jocelyn Spaar), and several forthcoming books. Bits of his own writing can be found in Boston Review, BOMB, and the chapbook Inclusivity Blueprint from Diez. He is currently on a year’s fellowship with the National Endowment for the Arts for further translation of Marcel Schwob, and coedits/designs for O’clock Press.
