Love Sick Century by Elly Bookman

I love this book so much. Partly because I love the poet so much. Elly and I were in a workshop together for a few years, meeting monthly around a pot of risotto. Some of the poems in this book were discussed at that gathering.

When you sit in workshop with someone over time, there are parts of their talent and process that you try to incorporate in your own writing. There are ways to viewing a poem and feedback that you gain. Elly has a perfect ear. Since working with her, I think I recognize and hopefully use sound better. Her sounds echo and enhance the meaning beautifully. Her images are likewise crisp and precise, disorienting in their focus so that we can see something newly.

I am so happy this book is in the world. You should order it here.

“Nocturne”

After I make my home dark

I wander through the few

quiet rooms and let

the bright blinking eyes

of the continuing electricity

take me in. The modem, forever

streaming its signals in and back

out again to the air of

the living room, flashes the language of

its six green indicators

into the dim, and I’m not

untouched. By the door,

the alarm pad keeps its emerald

beacon of earnest defense

burning on, and I’m not

vulnerable. And I remember

every thing is a thing

someone made, that

somewhere someone’s job

is to place tiny bulbs inside

plastic bodies, that

someone else’s is to decide

that firefly color, to sit

at a table shining under office light

and tell me which vividness

should tell me I am kept

safe, I am kept connected, even

as loneliness hums its generator

like a heart in a jar.

“Dark”

Schools gone dark. On the last day

we told the children to take everything

home, supervised as they emptied dark

lockers of books, loose pages, mirrors.

I don’t drive past the dark windows and

halls, missing it. I make dark the living

room and fill it back up with the light of

a movie. Something about creatures who

stalk in the dark, thrive on its blankness.

But I go to bed before the end, when

dark returns to the screen with its list

of names. I sleep in dark, but shove

voices in my ears that belong to bodies

who sat in lit rooms a good while ago

to discuss science, loss. Even sunrises—

I sleep through them now, can’t stand

that semi-dark slide into the worsened

day. Dark soil in the garden beds, in

the houseplants, spilled on the kitchen

floor. The dark fur of the dog so soft

I’d skin her to make myself a coat if I

didn’t love the rest of her so desperately.

Dark thoughts like that in my head

all day. Dark mode so the screens are

gentler on the eyes. Not that they feel

any strain—no dark itch in the pupil.

If anything I feel so much the same—

no new humid night sets its dark down

in my swallow (the sickness), nor does

any heart-wound turn rotten and raw.

I am the dark’s pale rider, indifferent

and slow. By the time schools reopen,

dark won’t be anything on which to

remark. A girl will open her locker and

out dark will pour and she’ll think how

she’s learned it. Dark homework. Dark

that has spent all these days staring

into the left-behind mirror at itself, stirred

to cloud at last, to a downpour about

to make the day cool and blue, make all

this a yesterday. Her shadowy backpack.