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# A Poem by Lucy Ives
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/a-poem-by-lucy-ives/
- Published: 2016-03-16T11:03:23.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:42:30.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Lucy Ives for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Joe Pan
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:17 (2016, 2017, part 1)

*Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Lucy Ives for* [*his series*](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/hyperallergic-poetry/) *that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.*

\* \* \*

![Marcel Broodthaers, "The Ballad of a Star over Reading Gaol" (1975) (one of three), oil on canvas (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/03/img_3996-copy-1.jpg)

Marcel Broodthaers, “The Ballad of a Star over Reading Gaol” (1975) (one of three), oil on canvas (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino for Hyperallergic)

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## Maybelline

I am clearing my mind again  
I mean, “I think”  
So  
I am bad  
I am good?  
I am very very good laughing a lot in delight  
As at the same time there are many cameras?  
I am good  
I try  
My head  
Is good  
I am the one who is bad  
Escaping when it is not time  
Racing downstairs  
I sleep for years  
On a lawn  
In Melbourne  
In Australia  
I am good  
I am very good rising in greatness  
People say my name not even to know me  
I light a candle  
I am that good  
Animals I created during the 17th century  
Could be brought back to life  
A drowsy octopus blows its nose on my thigh  
Ants lick me  
I am wrong  
I didn’t know this was happening  
And that is so far worse  
Even  
Than being incorrect  
Darkening as it does all previously  
Known sentiment  
Fear is  
Good or not good  
Fear is the ultimate purview  
Of the philosopher  
It is the yoke  
To harness bad to good  
Fear shivering in excellent sunsets  
Either I am bad or I am good  
Either  
Witnesses have known me or  
Truth in their  
Responses was  
Relative, local  
And I dwelt  
Or was dwelling  
Where  
I did not share  
Their commitment  
To any type of certainty  
I am good because  
It is right here  
What happened  
A stacked result  
That’s tight  
And turns  
Whatever face  
Away  
Probably you  
Regret my  
Puerile  
Statement  
You knock  
Upon the desk  
With one long finger  
You take the time  
That later  
Will be needed  
You put it  
Away  
Great  
Good  
Foreseen  
Very  
Very very  
Good  
Not that I see all  
But the point is I am looking  
My official release  
My redemption  
Do not really matter  
That I  
Know always better than  
Maybe I knew  
Scholars of America  
Here is what I want to do  
Maybe born with it  
As spring approaches  
I discover Carl Jung  
In a dream  
He dips  
Below the horizon  
Your jealousy  
Was less complex  
Carl Jung making speeches  
Behind  
A simple sky  
He does a lot for weather  
Wax  
A barrel  
Pointed at the sky  
But I don’t know  
As you begin thinking and become one thing  
The future is just yellow  
How do you feel about gazes  
Like an airplane we do not  
Know  
The nearness of just one actual mile  
Is specific  
More or less true  
An answer would “speak”  
You would “turn”  
I’d “speak”  
I mean, no longer “legion”  
I would turn  
English is “myriad”  
Keats remarked  
A recession  
In which clouds  
Thump the sky  
I’ve known this all morning  
If someone doesn’t ask you  
What you are doing  
You shall  
Be good  
You shall be good for one more day  
When I am good I know  
What I am doing  
I walk on a dais  
I swarm ashore  
Yes yes  
I lie  
A lot  
This is why  
I am not  
Good  
In the essential  
If you were to write something  
Topical like  
The story of a search  
In which, “The Past…”  
This would qualify  
And I think it’s good  
You have your mind  
You use it to produce opinion  
This is at least partially  
The great and famous  
Thing  
You are more rational and therefore  
The more  
You speak  
The more there is  
The good  
Lastingly I believe  
For you whom humans  
Imitate are good  
Like  
Anyone would say  
“I saw it beginning”  
If I am bad it is because  
I know no  
Better  
Than to be this way  
No  
It is because I am wrong in  
Not knowing  
This is the effect  
Finally  
Much as  
Yes  
I am not good  
I can  
Only read  
Law  
Its letter  
I am good  
If I am good  
In  
This sense  
Science smiles  
Teeth flickering  
The infinite divisibility of distances  
Does good  
To one  
Such as me  
I am using words to point to other words and it’s  
OK with readers  
I live  
I don’t do a single thing

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Lucy Ives is the author of four books of poetry and prose, including the novella [*nineties*](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R3KUZQY/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com). A book of aphorisms and extremely short stories, *The Hermit*, will be published by The Song Cave in spring 2016\. Her first full-length novel, *Impossible Views of the World*, is forthcoming from Penguin in 2017\. Co-editor of Triple Canopy, Ives lives in New York, where she teaches at the Pratt Institute.

*Those who wish to submit to Hyperallergic should send 3–5 poems to [poetry@hyperallergic.com](mailto:poetry@hyperallergic.com).*