Two Poems by Ariana Reines
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features two poems by Ariana Reines.
Magazine Feminism
I could not be said to have “wound
Up” anywhere but it was true
That at that time I was alone. Also
True was that I had not been fucked correctly
In what was starting to feel like a long
Time. I used the apps but did not
Show myself on them to be a person
Sipping cocktails on an inflatable dolphin
Nor was I a person about to simply say
Who she was and what she sought. I got
More attention, of course, than I could possibly
Return, and at a rate of about one in a thousand
Encountered someone with whom I felt
What is commonly termed “a spark.”
My appetite for self-advertisement having
Become, admittedly, low since the period
I had to take the university to court and the time
Before that when I was being stalked by several
Men and the ex-wife of an ex-boyfriend.
I was certainly having a profound experience
Of myself and of the light that fell on me
And my views, and the distortions of my views
And the cheaper versions of things I had done
Which shone in the light my machines gave
I just don’t even have words for what it felt like
I don’t have words for when you would rather work
Than fuck but to borrow a phrase
From an old jazz song it can happen to you
I am tired of the ruse of emptiness that fills
My sexual imagination when I feel beauty
Of a certain kind being done to me
And tired also of the job of performing
Sovereignty according to these old rules
Some of my favorite people seem to be fueled
By pure rancor. By rancor alone.
I can’t say I’m the same
The sun warms my writing hand
I forget all the time
That the sun is our friend
I often forget that I have friends
I taught myself to surrender
It was strategic, like going out
Of your body while somebody fucks you
And you don’t want it
Every woman knows what this is like
I don’t know a single one who hasn’t done it
But I taught myself another kind of surrender too
I did it in the off hours, in whatever time and space
I could steal from my career. All I can say is
Once you have surrendered like that
It becomes hard to care about magazine feminism
Though I find myself looking back at it
Like the doomed woman from the myth
And looking back at everything else too
My barbaric homeland, I beheld it from deep within a jewel
I looked down at it from airplanes
I studied it with unkindness
The way I had learned to study my own face and body
The bad ideologies through which we all
Had to move could be shaken off, and our mutual
Dependence on the machines to fill the desert
In our lives with music and bodies, ideas and fun
I would not change it for a mountain
But so many mountains had already fallen
And it may be that my despair that day
In a light of pale beaten
Gold, like something in an Attic
Vision, while an eclipse progressed
That could not be seen, it may be
That my despair was chemical or that
It was menstrual, but it was also
Mensual, actual, or it was all a bad dream
I too a product of magazines
And yet, I wanted to say, and yet
Some wild feature of my apparent docility
Is even now filling my arms
As if it were a cayenne pepper soda
I were talking to you through
But now I feel the other world pulling me down
Again. . . Goodbye
Boomers
They taught us the world
Was ending but they were wrong
Rite they hardly taught us anything
Hiding themselves
In the cantaloupe
Light at the witching
Hour
Our parents, badly
Harmed, desperate
But unkind
Clinging
To whatever
They could remember
From the war
And to the phrase
“Before the War”
Which they carried
Into the next
Country
With a couple of coins
A stick
Of furniture
Hairs sprouting
From their tough old leg
He understood there
To be feeling
In it
But he did not
Know
What feeling was
The heart has brain
Cells in it
My lover said
Since before
I reached
Majority
My country has been at war
My adulthood entered war
In parallel to the decline of her art
Which could not be protested
Only soaped like grey water down
The flocked back of a stone
Maiden
Hypnosis of scents & of forms
Gag teeth
Make no sound
Poker chips
Chips you can’t eat
I’ll put my money on the crystal
Children
Your own career
From LAX to El
Pollo Loco like all
Truly natural
Things at last
Completed
In the dark
And in silence
Unacclaimed
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