"unfortunately perfect"

i picked up a thin book called "something i expected to be different" by joshua beckman (verse press) at the boise public library book sale last weekend. i recognized beckman's name from a poetry class years ago and figured 50 cents on a most-likely-decent read wasn't a bad deal.

something happens to me when i open a book and find myself on the page. it's like all breathing stops, all senses fade, and it's just me and the text and this incredible ache in my chest that throbs: "i could have written this." this is exactly what happened when i read the last poem in the collection, "block island," which begins with the speaker in a too-small bathtub reflecting on his sulking around his lonely apartment after a life-wrecking break up, writing little, and drinking lots of tea. the narrative follows the speaker's thought process about his mental state ("me/always repeating what you say/ and what everyone says/ because I am distracted just not listening/ distracted distracted"), emotional state ("I have a lot of directional-going within me"), unrequited love ("Your presence/ somewhere else is the sad warm thing/ blowing around my room"), and other peoples' advice to move on ("Do I know what it feels like, of course I know").

i don't know copyright rules, but i'm pretty sure it's illegal to transcribe the entire poem here on blogger, so i'll share some snippets of magnificence.


"Dull heart,
you are out of breath.
One day you are hoarse
one day you promise to do everything
silently, and are hoarse again."


"Love, you are dull
you are simple
unacceptable incomplete
you rush places
sway crowds
act mean
and low
and honest
every chance you get.
Come, take me away from this.
I have romance for you.
I have passion for you.
I have the shrill sounds
of a bird* caught in your hallway."

*The poem references a bird in the hallway a few times. In the middle of the poem, Beckman writes, "Did a bird/ get loose/ in your house/ like the high key of a piano/ ting tinging a song/ off your walls and windows?/ Welcome to the electric mind/ of I am and want to be/ twenty all day long." I think the bird is a symbol for the mind trying to free itself from grief. Plus, Block Island-- the title of the poem--looks like a bird, doesn't it? This is when I need a book group...


"Soon she will
be attracted to everyone"


"there is always a third person with us"

(what does it mean to leave someone behind?)


" You need my love
and I give you a poem, you need my understanding
and I give you the criticism
of love's temperature always changing
and never returning
though some people will tell you
that everything returns
acting this way
is people's way being
distracted me
the sour look of her
no longer in love face
not infatuated, worse I say
is that you just keep longing for her
stop longing for her"


"When I am out in the world and the air does its little displacement
with my body, I think of you moving with the horizon
in and out of view."


" I wanted no more
than the little I wanted."


i thought having a boyfriend meant i wouldn't have to feel heartache anymore. when i see my exact feelings encapsulated in small black type on a white rectangular page published in 2001 by poet i've never met, i am seized with the realization that we all experience moments of sadness, of inability to move on, of throat-clenching frustration. here is to acknowledging heartache,

and here is my goodbye.