Improv on "The Artist as Lefthander"

Journal entry 1

Riffing on Stephen Dunn’s “The Artist as Lefthander”

“Each morning, thinking of you, / I rise from the counterworld of sleep”

Starless and not thinking of you,
I rise from the counterworld of sleep
into the silence of the speaking world, the voices so garbled
I can’t register the solids. Earplugs,
headphones, ringtones, videos
that loop and loop and loop
until they puke. I want to speak, hear
that belltone voice of mine—you said—
but without anyone to listen,
the singer coiling in on himself on a black
box stage, spotlight hot, howling how he’s
learned the language with browning teeth.
You say the metaphor is dead
with your Turkish coffee and phone
ablaze, your glasses refracting its easy light.
A hum, a drone, a home.
Those bed-warped curls that bounce
to electric rhythms in your bedroom,
they compose orchestral pieces
like all those bewigged fucks I can’t stand
when you bring them up over stale toast and eggs.