Hannah Brooks-Motl
Happy Drunk
In the drinking I believed we saw things
A figure as one condition of patience and—inebriate—she was
Or this made me think why anything begins or ends
Of invasive evening
Both accumulation and escape: when she concludes this in the kitchen is she somewhere
The kitchen as conclusion OK does this consume me
Having here spoil, desire, and recomposition—
Do I grow older and my titties sag?
I think both variously and observant, attempt the tiny slosh
Of the naturalist
It is simple she dreams
To slip beyond the man-made lake
There is no other locale, no different noun walking home
In the apartment I’m making roast
Of my spirit
For certain longing and feelings he has action, then sadness
The tumble-around very green
In the most quasi-historical sense one suffers a true capacity for change, is element and of the
earthworks
When I am in the country; when I requite the country
When I describe the high old color enjoying its drip of liquor, lover, moon
Distance he said velvets the grid and velvet she perceived quite profoundly
It’s so individual
As one’s birthday is a rational event, unlike true gratitude
In the drinking I believed things
Certain looks received in honor of the violet there, then the cursive
On a desk you are writing, won’t you
Middle of summer I mean, torso of life
The ancient way kept complexity from hands
A relative statement
Like how gladly I go to my beer tonight
Or perhaps the system’s torn tissue begat the rural quiet
Narrow on the narrow page
Mother’s garden can’t carry weeping—that is design
The singular lovable rain in which a baby’s new voice is sailing
Not-a-worker, not a non-desirer
All choices were bad, it was how we knew nations
Rolling through us
They came up
They departed
Start with one woman but add them
Air above the bed more personal than storms
For a shaming style creates the kitchen
An arrogant speech act rarely performed in code or clean gorgeousness
We all contain small skies
The nothing sexual in a boyfriend’s sadness
She managed to enter history and yet, and yet
There are vitalities the world refuses to elaborate, varietals of anger, Augusts—to be up late
loving he provoked and then rebuked, this was “the whole mind”
Its many critiques plus an inward effect
Similarly kinds of birds, clouds and soil, does the internet exist or the way in which glaciers,
finance, and simple physics work
A kind of thinking, at myself
They remember nothing he confided, so we forego these atmospheres of plenty
Perhaps the song of her is blight
Next-door the distance tumbles
Capable and suffering the rational envy, in the anthology they were a certain part
And night a type of portrait, unlike true mist
The deep longing liquor
Of all earthworks
Mother’s not a me-worker, it’s how she scraggles
And cabins her language
Such occupation keeps life ancient
The farm or nation, the middle of violence
Relating right through some complex of garden, some departure
One’s relatives singing
How gladly to choose the bad husband
Unchoose him
And descend on your cursive, a mere sense
Of the singular hand
You’ve gone to drink with
Clouds are always personal, their speech just one variety of soil
You know inwardness is the obvious illustration, but add shame
And suddenly a woman is vital with sadness
The glacier cleaned by fear, a whole mind
Just furious physics
Liking small effects, rueful adding
The internet of critique and of variety in the globos—
I drink to birds, those babes
Of new voice and weeping
Remember the year, its lost grandeur
And salads
I remember nothing, they confided and their freedom ran tacit, then heaving
As the bloom entered history—gorgeous, arrogant, and vital
I include dinner in the poem cuz of hunger
Cuz of dirt and class longings
Location isn’t generous but a conventional totem
A different spirit, no favorite way to live
But only inside this
He was a figure
She was
Desire is an OK conclusion
Alex Niemi translates from the French, Spanish and Russian and writes poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dusie, Buenos Aires Review, Iowa Literaria and the anthology Devouring the Green: Fear of a Transhuman Planet.
