Arda Collin’s Star Lake

4. Late Summer, Late Winter, Genocide

“There is only a hand stretched toward the horizon that rises up as ocean swells or high plateaus.” — Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

5. From a June Sky

See also: Psalm 119, Verse 1

6. Wind

The wind is making me think of something—or something is making me think of the wind—or I just hear it rattling the screen door.

wh-

-sh

7. Summer Day

I can, as I write this, hear birds outside and I am prompted to think of my Grandfather’s brother Harvey who looks just like my Grandfather but smaller.

No brother, only Olive Rose.

8. Story

Wind has another cameo.

Had something to say but it’s daytime.

9. Wish, Swish

A butterfly in a corner and an angel from a corner.

Coming on a year since learning about tensor tympani and that eyedrops are not loud for everyone.

10. Medieval Love Poem

An inventory: grass, shadows, lakes, rain, hay

Corn silk and other corresponding notes. Egg- based, animalic.

11. Early

Rolling in the white foam of boiling pasta water, trying to make it out—is that angel hair?

Angel hair or aldehydes.

12. Love

There are adults like babies—especially while considering things like love—and these people, for some reason, think they’re exceptional—is that right?—I’m trying to read the room.

Imagining the meal ordered was some kind of bisque.

13. Air

I had something to say about this one, but decided against it but earlier I saw a loose balloon in the sky.

You know that one set of postcards that used the same stock image of the sky? The clouds looked the same all around the world.

14. September October

“Well, I can tell you about the river, or we could just get in” - Bill Callahan.
“From the Rivers to the Ocean”

Someone paid with exact change recently. One of the pennies was flattened and imprinted with the New River Gorge Bridge.

15. Old Snow

It’s what’s left and not yet melted and it seems solid and when it gets stepped on—I thought I heard someone say something.

Always have a hard time recognizing my own shoe prints when it gets like that.

16. My Mother’s face

“Okay, well I’ve got a lot of questions about life,” the sunset repeats itself to the people below closing their blinds.”

Mom is in the yard, dangling ten waterlogged bags of country peach passion above the jar like a proud fisherman.

17. Walk the Days

A dozen steps, right, to get there, or it takes a dozen days at least—then divided by 2 hounds makes what?

The song they arranged to help with memorization didn’t account for the fact that the number would keep changing.

18. Scale

What show was it & which episode?

The people with the postcards also said we only had 150 left with em so we should make it count.

19. Nothing

0?

Evens out.

20. Thursday

“To write: to refuse to write—to write by way of this refusal. So it is that when he is asked for a few words, this alone suffices for a kind of exclusion to be decreed, as though he were being obliged to survive, to lend himself to life in order to continue dying.” - Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

He called her a generous woman and boasted about all the other undervalued gemstones.

21. Way

“Oh I can stand to be away from the river, but it’s pretty hard to be apart from water. I like to be around water”

AND/OR

“Because Lao-tzu said water was the most powerful thing and it was the most passive thing—you could pass your hand through it with force, yet it can destroy cities and towns with its force.” - Frank Stanford, Interview with Irving Broughton

22. Shaded Road

And if it were taller?

Received mixed information on if “bonsaied” is recognised as a word.

23. Love in Another Dimension

“Just tell me about the boulevards. Tell me about your life in art.” - Mojave 3, “My Life in Art”

Or Bill’s line about the motel curtains.

24. 112

1 + 1 = 2; have to start somewhere, it’s just something I’ve noticed—like this and the undefiled blessed.

Other people too are wondering what frogs do in the summer.

25. Wild Love

It’s funny—I remember and ocean near a forest

Always another.

26. Afternoon

I know Food Lion has blue in its logo, and what else?— Alberston’s, Aldi…?

The shoe had a hole in the heel, a decorative hole, not a wear. He got so close to it and I hoped someone else would come who’s last name was between ours.

27. Middle Distance

When a tree is mentioned—or trees—does a reader typically picture pines? or something leafy and then is it bare or green with leaves or orange? or is it a fruit tree?—pear, cherry, apple, orange?

Anything basketed.

28. Ghost

Last week, a suggested article on the home page: “What, Actually, Are Eye Floaters?”

Always contradicting feelings when they put a name to it.

29. August

Hmm actually, August and September are better than September and October but October is still just fine, even great.

First track of Blood Rushing.

30. Elegy From Space

“Reminds me that there’s a time to change, hey, hey-yeah” - just take a guess…

Can never aerate that.

31. Restore Ending

Cool, like when in the Hercules cartoon, Pegasus blows out Hades blue-flame hair.

Something sinister about when the roadsides have a gulch. Probably for the best though. Sudden flood zones.

32. This is a Poem

And this has been a book of ‘em.

Butter light, caffeinated light, wood light, under light- after C.D.

33. Easter

“Leaves and fruit are a waste of energy if our only wish is to rise.” - Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“I sailed through the clouds on ten crested cardinals, To guard my battleground, But I laughed so hard I cried” - Judee Sill, “The Lamb Ran Away With the Crown”