Читать книгу Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities - Olena Kalytiak Davis - Страница 7

sweet reader, flanneled and hilled

Reader unmov'd and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc'd

and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still

I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.

I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank

season, counting—I sleep and I sleep. I sleep,

Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf

as a leaf. Reader: Why don't you turn

pale? and, Why don't you tremble? Jaded, staid

Reader, You—who can read this and not even

flinch. Bare-faced, flint-hearted, recoilless

Reader, dare you—Rare Reader, listen

and be convinced: Soon, Reader,

soon you will leave me, for an italian mistress:

for her dark hair, and her moon-lit

teeth. For her leopardi and her cavalcanti,

for her lips and clavicles; for what you want

to eat, eat, eat. Art-lover, rector, docent!

Do I smile? I, too, once had a brash artless

feeder: his eye set firm on my slackening

sky. He was true! He was thief! In the celestial sense

he provided some, some, some

(much-needed) relief. Reader much-slept with, and Reader I will die

without touching, You, Reader, You: mr. small-

weed, mr. broad-cloth, mr. long-dark-day. And the italian mis-

fortune you will heave me for, for

her dark hair and her moonlit-teeth. You will love her well in-

to three-or-four cities, and then, you will slowly

sink. Reader, I will never forgive you, but not, poor

cock-sure Reader, not, for what you think. O, Reader

Sweet! and Reader Strange! Reader Deaf and Reader

Dear, I understand you yourself may be hard-

pressed to bare this small and unnecessary burden

having only just recently gotten over the clean clean heart-

break of spring. And I, Reader, I am but the daughter

of a tinker. I am not above the use of bucktail spinners,

white grubs, minnow tails. Reader, worms

and sinkers. Thisandthese curtail me

to be brief: Reader, our sex gone

to wildweather. YesReaderYes—that feels much-much

better. (And my new Reader will come to me empty-

handed, with a countenance that roses, lavenders, and cakes.

And my new Reader will be only mildly disappointed.

My new Reader can wait, can wait, can wait.) Light

-minded, snow-blind, nervous, Reader, Reader, troubled, Reader,

what'd ye lack? Importunate, unfortunate, Reader:

You are cold. You are sick. You are silly.

Forgive me, kind Reader, forgive me, I had not intended to step this quickly this far

back. Reader, we had a quiet wedding: he&I, theparson

&theclerk. Would I could, stead-fast, gracilefacile Reader! Last,

good Reader, tarry with me, jessa-mine Reader. Dar-

(jee)ling, bide! Bide, Reader, tired, and stay, stay, stray Reader,

true. R.: I had been secretly hoping this would turn into a love

poem. Disconsolate. Illiterate. Reader,

I have cleared this space for you, for you, for you.