Jon-Michael Frank
Covering John Berryman
The Opening Words Of I
it is;
& the stage is & will be
open & does not close
in all these years, We’ve never found a better way
than through audience, to address life:
so I arrives, center & front,
to make of his monologue
what he could not make of his life:
life;
as the black crow must & does
settle longest upon the sight
its departure derives its meaning from: I’s looking on,
though once, long ago, take note:
I appeared not as I appeared today
his fault was in
becoming himself, &
T.W. died,
& there were Sarahs after Sarahs
w/o Her, the Idiot’s lines, one Mr. Singer,
some Brittany, & then: Time,
but all characters are part: I
(or else,
Me)
though
might I realize that all of this is,
& w/o cease, will be, ceaselessly,
about love,
let us see: We must always find something to love
or, if not,
speak:
The After Party, W/ & Always Ms. Lesley Gore (“It’s My Party & I’ll Cry If I Want To / Cry If I Want To / Cry If I Want To”)
the heart’s a fate: duh-duh
duh-duh
& something, w/ the music, concurrently
died down in I
as outside the uneven windows
were magnolias, heavy & heaving w/ an Indian spring,
breaking in bulk from all their familiar limbs;
& We, too, have grown accustom to the same
continuing to break in bulk from familiar
limb after familiar limb after familiar limb;
I: Why do We compose w/ people
We know is, & too, like us, are going away?
& Hey Me!
what stay is worth its
equivalent away?
so much of what We are is distances:
please give Me something close
that never goes
like the pang
that proxies
this heart
but that doesn’t
hurt;
it’s sad to think
the universe could be emptier than I:
& like Braille, everything had to be felt;
but there are no ends to it,
The Idiot: a truth: “We’re w/o sojourns,”
in order to quiet the heart
one must find a feeling
that cannot be made more beautiful
by human error
Jon-Michael Frank has work published or forthcoming in Anti-, Inter/rupture, Sink Review and Sixth Finch, among others. A chapbook of poems is forthcoming from Birds LLC, and another chapbook, of comics, is being released by El Aleph Press in 2014. Jon-Michael is also an assistant editor for the small press BIRDS, LLC, helps run a reading series in Austin, TX called Fun Party, and sells illustrations about life, or the lack of it, on etsy.
