2 poems & process:
Dear Friend & Did You Feel That
Tyler Brewington
Dear Friend
I appreciate your value
I shall not say very much to you
Whenever possible
In my absence, I want to bring to you
The things you need
You may feel perfectly free
I have one regret and that is that
I am talking to people
I have, of course, no way of knowing
Perhaps you are
Perhaps you are
Or possibly you
Maybe it makes no difference, perfect precision
In every human life
So, no matter
No matter what
Your attention, your circumstances
You an increased measure
It never was meant to be
That you and I should be
The tomb behind this scheme
Really, far different
You are one continuous struggle
With the world
First try this and then try that
In the grip of my message, you are unfortunate
Enough to be a person
It would be absolute foolishness to send steam shovels
Which I sometimes get
I am not an old man by any means
But to the contrary I am
And yet, the ocean
First I tried this and then I tried that
I do not think it is possible for people to be happy
When they are denied
The very things which tend to happiness
When I say happy
You should drive out of your life
As fast as I did
So again I say that my only regret is you
In your own home
In unmistakable language
You and I
What is known
What is not known
Personally, I am willing to believe anything
The moon
We have it with us
It’s not very potent today
Did You Feel That
I think I know how to send a silence down the hallway ahead of me. I think quiet starts in my head and moves down my spine into my hips, heels, and ankles. I think I want my night walks to be a secret from my neighbors. It’s embarrassing to come home with an underripe grapefruit, but if I find a rotten ring inside my red onion it’s not the fault of my squeeze. I can’t die before my cat does. I’m not very interested in individual days. Only at the gym do I count to 100. There’s a method for soft scrambled eggs that takes lots of butter and half an hour. I need to play music out loud through a speaker so the sound waves can get into my cytoplasm. If you’re having a big group picnic I want you out of my hills. Anger is a red balloon attached to the back of my head and neck, anxiety a thick mist that gathers around my shins. I have an empty beach inside and it is sadness to touch the wet sand. What happens inside a cocoon? Courage. A kick. Architects can see the future. They do it together with an exercise called a charrette. My building is 91 and has no central ventilation system, so coming and going creates a wind that rattles each door. After the earthquake we all rushed into the hall to ask if we could believe what we knew. Our building was built. At my window the next day, a new bird.
Reading recommendation?
Bandit by Molly Brodak, The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza (translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana), and The Last Innocence/The Lost Adventures by Alejandra Pizarnik (translated by Cecilia Rossi).
More erasures: A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle, All This Can Be Yours by Isobel O’Hare, and Nets by Jen Bervin.
Tyler Brewington is the author of the chapbook Dear Stray Volcano and the co-author, with Kelly Schirmann, of Nature Machine and Boyfriend Mountain. His work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Salt Hill, the PEN Poetry Series, and elsewhere. He is from Boise, Idaho.
