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# Two Poems by Daniel Owen
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-daniel-owen/
- Published: 2018-08-01T11:00:43.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:24:52.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Daniel Owen for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/07/26868626605_75abaf3cee_o.jpg)

Vincent van Gogh, “Still Life with Cabbage and Clogs” (1881) (via PW McMahon on Flickr)

## SLEEVE AS PACKING

creating use  
from the word loving  
or of it  
of that action of a window  
again and again  
as if to learn  
what could be laze  
would be worth noting  
notating or taken  
to a garden full of radiant cabbage  
anxious for employment  
windows of working

the garden weeps  
in the air  
as sleeping is fine  
sometimes  
on a wrack of opening  
points  
the monologue walks  
to the center of the room  
we are listening drinking in circles  
we like babies  
babies with books in their teeth  
they walk clapping  
for apparent newness  
in drift

reason washes on the substitute sublime  
its taste of hair and salt for a calendar  
is in its action  
hours that will come  
promising a hem a hem  
a root a root

## MORE TIME

institutions of your own  
appetite described by sleep as  
the back of the book  
steps away the fears come nearer  
the flesh — an image of  
tiny bodies in palms and  
footage of gone-by arboreal dream homes  
fetishized oceans with you sipping need  
to be in my mouth an exhibition —  
cold sun work walk  
tires along canal banks erase  
the mind amid music  
in the morning after what’s passed  
for today where the record  
shop used to be the picture  
of pills—the zorse’s father fenced  
looking out at sky and  
ground — the beautiful horses he seeks  
impossible release in a radio voice  
and the papered over not knowing  
makes the kissing noise to minutes in attempt  
to save something — how I should act around  
work or grandmas our suffering  
shorn from what its shearing is  
saved on to repeat an hour  
as an opening shared —  
history is not the like time tells  
to passage as airs can’t hear  
the words none will unwrite  
to listen to the sea in the clock of the face  
to talk but not produce  
a state that isn’t process so  
we order light on cheekbones discharged  
again and are for the night wheels  
along the empty decided

\* \* \*

Daniel Owen is the author of [*Toot Sweet*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0935992413/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com) (United Artists Books, 2015) and [*Restaurant Samsara*](http://furniturepressbooks.com/books/owenrestaurant-samsara/?ref=hyperallergic.com) (Furniture Press Books, 2018). His translation of Afrizal Malna’s *Document Shredding Machine* is forthcoming from Reading Sideways Press. His writing has recently appeared in *The Recluse*, *The Brooklyn Rail*, *The Fanzine*, *Vestiges*, and elsewhere. He is a member of the Ugly Duckling Presse editorial collective.