Influential Ghosts
dear mothers, dear daughters,
dear pen-pals,
fellow students, former
employees, professors,
educators in
general, dear somebody
else’s headache,
dear mistake
or accident, dear
wistful woman,
why so sad,
dear solitude,
dearly departed,
why your hand,
dear empathy,
dear nuanced
understanding,
dear plight
of the advanced
professional,
dear single
looking
for a partner,
dear partner,
dearest,
I’m just so bored, Rachel
I confess I have no inner resources
other resources include:
my family
a woman’s body
an art v. love complex
particular sound
Fellowship
I live alone with my husband where we have
several cats and pieces of furniture
I live alone with my cats where we cuddle or
I live alone with my roommates
I have been working on my daylight hours
for 26 years now and hope to collect them
in a chapbook-length manuscript soon
My husband is a composite of ideas
I've been thinking about since high school
a sort of roman-a-clef—For my research
I have been reading feminist autobiographies
such as Madame Bovary, The Second Sex,
and The Golden Notebook, which is more
a story of myself than my husband could be
With this fellowship I will continue my work
on personal habits and further my studies
in the field of literary abstraction—
I am grateful for the imaginative capacity
I have been afforded thus far, and am eager
to join my colleagues in the advancement
of women in letters and the arts to date
I miss intimacy
—It’s hard to see yourself sometimes…
—What do you mean?
—Like having that view of yourself from the outside.
—Is that really seeing yourself?
—No maybe not, but it’s the way you’re seen in the world.
—I have this theory about artists: they can’t get too self-reflexive or they get stuck.
—Paralysis of the will, I call it. Depression.
—Yeah maybe, or like a crippling anxiety.
—What’s even the difference?
—The desire to communicate.
—Is that depression?
—No, that’s the desire to communicate with yourself.
prayer
whatever selfhood acts here
let it swim unselfishly
so all the earthly borders
of the self not compromise
the heart there—so the fault
of other selves don’t drown
or otherwise consume the self-same
worries of the mind—
so that the self is kind enough
to other selves in other bodies—
so that their personhoods are treasured
like the self—and all its
complicated overwrought endeavors
—so that the self is joyful
with the rest like touching the stove
not realizing that it’s hot
like a train rammed into my gut
and I watched it happen
like a slow drown, a loud incision
a precise disaster
with its own dark mind
like an aware ecology
takes pleasure in my ends
like it takes my surface first
and then an organ on the inside
like it takes its toll and takes it
with a taste for taking and a flair
for operating the device
a talent for the fake nice face
aiming at me twice
and then once-over—like the whole
affair is in alarm, the city
rings its bells and tells you
there’s a toll here and a state
so full of vibrant colors
it can bury you—
Needs
paper towel
red onions
milk
juice
bread
dressing
sketch 4
beautiful day, I’m in you
restless
like a man in me
arrested by the beauty of it
all that light
and not a body big enough
to wrest it from me
Marina Blitshteyn is the author of russian for lovers (argos books, 2011), her work has appeared in la fovea, fawlt, southword, and culturestrike, among others. She writes and teaches in nyc.