Poems

[1]

morning thaws

our incoherencies into

                    puddle streams

flat grey meteorology

roll up your sleeves

stagger the breaths

into stranded desire

runs on empty.

The linga as form

of formlessness, that

fear to hand over

the symbolon always

already broken, the

jagged edge look

like hell warmed over

look for its other jaggedness

the broken klipoth

more than empty

        

the autopoetic path

    self regulating
        coming in your own mouth
            ourobouros
                creation swallowed

    there is need for difference
        for the other, the gasp
            in between you and me
                something unknown
                    a self that is not

    the one I  know
        so that the one I grasp
            could be
                the elf of someone’s self.

The France Issue

Summer 2010

Poems

Pierre Joris

Pierre Joris is a poet, translator, essayist & anthologist. He has published over forty books, most recently Aljibar II (poems, Luxembourg / Quebec: Editions Phi / Ecrits des Forges, 2007) and Justifying the Margins (essays, London: Salt Publishing, 2009). Recent translations include Paul Celan: Selections (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2005), and  Lightduress by Paul Celan (Copenhagen, Denmark / Los Angeles: Green Integer Press, 2004), which received the 2005 PEN Poetry Translation Award. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning anthologies Poems for the Millennium (volumes I & II) (University of California Press, 1998).