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Being A Very Small Place

Whiteness of memory lost. Feeling orderly I enter a bus.

A pomegranate has three hundred and sixty five seeds, Hasmik said.

A quiet inset of pane souled into building. Mortuary air.

A well sutured tree, arboreal indolence, increases urban gait.

A word hinged into another breaks water or pours sand/a picture.

After fall back, starlings roost, bushes carved in song. Sun slicing eye’s length.

After fall back, starlings roost, bushes carved in song. Sun slicing eye’s length.

Nothing is as it seems; at the same time, it appears to be nothing.

The urge to find something lost is like the urge to return to the past.

Awake at mid-night, compose a few lines, forget them by morning.

Awake at mid-night, compose a few lines, forget them by morning.

Bible-thumping biker boards bike on rack, opens his text, underlines.

Bus vapors align themselves to the mystery of a child speaking.

Calypso dead in the market. She killed nobody but her husband.

Choreography of an accident is possibility.

Curiosity for anything but themselves pretty much extinct.

David Antin says: an anthology is to poets as a zoo is to animals.

Day to day a daily frustration reaches its highest potential

Day wincing shut. A few bright rays intrigue the leaves. First winter quarter.

Digital insomnia horrified by a chubby sourdough.

Discovered that amnesia is a ready companion to bullies.

Early evening. The fog rolls in, a woman talks about a death.

Do you know where those numbers reside? Stone upon stone another awakening.

Equilarium, elegy; we name things, welcome them to our past.

ex roommate: A lot of drama about your preferences but no nurturing.

Flipping channels at night; men talking and women getting their hair done.

Florescent lights and primary colors for poor in public spaces.

Flour and salt hold paper together, words are nipped into my mouth.

Her knees precede her. This bus kneels down, a force of habit, a torso.

Here the middle way between work and music is recalling my name.

Anonymity is spiritual consent.

High heels and corporate governance, patriarchal ineptitude.

Homeless Man: moves in a condensed version of himself, packed with belongings, intent.

Honing in on a “certainty” assuages parental approval.

Horizon line moving out. Liquid sunlight sheers air among strangers.

A metamorphosis! I am windy! Trees fraying in autumn.

I can’t help it. Speaking in prose is an imperial digestive.

“I don’t want to get between you and Justin,” one blonde said to her friend.

I saw dolphins, dolphins, at the naval base where they shoot off rockets.

I’m a misplaced button on a window ledge somewhere // artic tern.

Industrial mauve cements my daydream to a factual resin.

Is modern today or tomorrow what I know? It doesn’t matter.

It must fit in your pocket, it must be available all day long.

It’s not a question of how children learn. It’s what they want to teach them.

It’s walking that brings the world back.

Ko Un see palm trees as exclamation marks. Me – delirious strophes.

Laminates and fossils. I’m stuck to the source of my uneasiness.

Leaf blower chords silvered morning haze. Prius skims by unnoticed.

Long dreams complete with intricate protocol to forget when awake.

Maple leaf flames, etches shadow on new concrete. I walk to bus loved.

Mathematicians more readily accepted dealing abstraction.

Memory is shedding but its form is also an acquisition.

Ms. Moss calls me too cerebral. Is it the book or my intellect?

Napoleonic sewers, that’s our way in your addiction being.

No touching is allowed. Today I saw a young man running barefoot.

Nothing is as it seems; at the same time, it appears to be nothing.

Old trees, sentinels of oxygen, paraphrase this road, bequeath me.

Partied on Friday. Rested and read on Saturday. Cleaned on Sunday.

Pasta at six . A glass of white wine, mushrooms sautéed in olive oil.

Platinum coiffed. Stop requested. Brookhaven. A very little person.

Progress does not take into account the ennui it habituates.

Reading details of obituary does not alter my posture.

Running, laughing. Yard resolute in shade. Teacher’s damp lost reprimand.

She use to get up in the middle of the night to pet her dog.

Silvered shopping bag seemed an omen of what it could not reflect.

Single old man cranky and bitter: “Surely you must have heard something.”

Sky wasted in gutter, lights brimming thigh high, feet know were to go.

Sleepy, what was that dream? A magician in the hallway bedazzles me.

Social networks reinforce ideology, one’s own prejudice.

Somebody that reminds us of a disappointment is to be scoffed.

Teachers being filmed are more pleasant teachers. I can’t complain can I?

The choreography of an accident is possibility.

landscape with it’s brisk attitude of clouds

The steady comfort of domains keeping tally, casting abstraction.

The urge to find something lost is like the urge to return to the past.

The vanities of honorable intentions do not support survival.

To end it is to reason without words or emotions/resistance.

Tucked powdered sponge onto porcelain and shouldered surface whiter.

The vanities of honorable intentions do not support survival.

warm the previous body on bus seat early morning fog headlights

Why am I living word integrity into the brink of extinction.

Yesterday I was real smart. Camellia pulverized into concrete.

You internalize an urgency and think it will live forever.

In forlorn country country of stubs and knobs handles not what they’re meant to be.

Feel like we made each other into poetry writing assignments.

My plants sense my antipathy and follow willingly to trim.

Absence of personal communication generic makes me cry.

Schooled in shrink wrap and other particulars of human behaviors.

Communicating with ghosts at 6:30 a.m. a crow squawks near.

Winter frost under clear sky smoky breath before me Valentine’s Day

You wait a whole life to have white hair and wear silvered jewelry.

Is shedding a form of anxiety or a survival technique.

Myth: virgin women cloistered away writing incendiary poems.

Probably one of the only gay men women think of as a bachelor.

Those that compromise their integrity can not dispense any justice.

Jealousy is an itch only satisfied my annihilation.

Jet new morn staccatoed bird song man walks dog without leash.

Curious dove listens to me sing while I’m standing, waiting for bus.

Even the Hare Krishnas have to pay their parking validation.

I was born among the gods but have lived solely with mortals.

Penchant for answering a question with a story driving them mad.

It’s so obvious . . . he looks at her in an uncomplicated way.

Is shedding a form of anxiety or a survival technique?

I’m at the bus stop. We have to wash it. Get ready to wash. Love you.


 Sobre Thérèse Bachand

Nascida em Oakland, Califórnia, em 1953, é poeta e consultora de política social. Cresceu em uma grande família de sete filhos; seu pai, de origem franco-canadense, foi um advogado e, mais tarde, juiz de direito. Sua mãe, uma professora de escola, manteve laços estreitos com amigos que viviam em um convento nas proximidades. Bachand fez o Cowell College em Santa Cruz, Califórnia, onde estudou com o grande pensador Norman O. Brown. Ela se mudou para Marin em 1975, onde trabalhou primeiro como faxineira, e depois como técnica de continuidade no filme Black Stallion.