Alice Notley
Three
I’m so weak! and rain
again instead of noble
anger I cry some and talk
like a fish, underwater and
little bubbles words breaking
because we love each other
noble stands against each
other are out of the question
not of the question
everyone’s crying today
the baby and I the sea
is the sky
Emerging
out of another spell that’s
a circle
Concentric circles
like bangle bracelets slipping
over in and out of each other
Maybe I’m supposed to spend
this life finding out by
finding out about not succeeding
No
I don’t believe like that, yet
I’m writing holding a baby
and I realise, myself, I haven’t
myself, haven’t a self
and me wanting to impress you
with my universal and wise and
crystalline beautiful flowering
and form, O my person!
My person
is smears of prints
from all the touchings layers
of prints
right down to
the one fist of crystal
I mean the one
the one that smashes through
like death and power
Six Sixteen
I’ve just said to myself
& now see a lamp, hand
a girl’s, window and
mine
a May night
that I feel feverish
from having been drunk
& talked
just out of control
restless
& if I take a walk likely to get raped?
(that might not
be so bad you say)
in my old girl’s dormitory
where they have heart-rending
phone conversations
still rejecting and rejected
one’s broken up with
her boyfriend
another’s asleep and one
who hasn’t been stoned for over a
year
Earlier
I went out for a
sausage sandwich
3 men separately
said “Don’t look so sad”
“I’m not sad I’m hungover” I said
I haven’t been sad in
about five years.
A Postcard
what I like
is a window
then what I’m like
is a window
yellow, veined
with black
trees that rise into
the violet with
full hands on it
April
broke the bed fucking
morning tears
poems guests chatty birds
friendly neighbor zero
typically interesting dump
new flowers yellow pink scarlet
& sometimes looking pretty cold
grand piano
grandly inaccurate pianist
A Little Guinness
I feel bad so I can feel good
Touch bottom, go up etc you’re alive
(That’s me) you
touch my crotch
With your toe
as I say “string beans”
I feel how I’m flooded
With it
Like Allen Ginsberg’s “mere notes”:
A sudden myriad beauty the figures
Come out of the ground
The constellations
Dragon & Crown & String Beans
Blazing
Just like it says
These poems are included in Notley's collection Early Works, edited by Nick Sturm and forthcoming from Fonograf Editions in March 2023.
Alice Notley is the author of over 40 books of poetry, including, most recently, Certain Magical Acts (2016), Eurynome's Sandals (2019), and For the Ride (2020). Entitled The Speak Angel Series, her latest collection of new material is forthcoming from Fonograf Editions in February 2023. She lives in Paris.