From my Proust's New Eyes

Albertine Simonet is Marcel’s mistress . . .

Marcel is the narrator of Marcel Proust’s

seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu . . .

In Search of Lost Time . . .

Marcel is Proust . . .

Marcel is obsessed with Albertine . . .

He wishes to possess her . . . to own her . . .

Albertine appears in three of the seven volumes . . .

Her name occurs 2,363 times . . . on 807 pages . . .

Albertine is first seen pushing her bicycle

on a beach . . . skirts billowing . . .

Marcel will return again and again to this image . . . 

Albertine is asleep in 19 percent of the novel . . .

Asleep, she becomes a plant . . .

her hair like crinkly black violets . . .

Proust uses plants as metaphors

for female sexual desire . . .

In The Albertine Workout the poet Anne Carson

notes that plants expose their genitalia . . .

Marcel observes that sometimes in her sleep

Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked . . .

Hence, Proust’s fascination with sleep . . .

Fade to black . . .

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But more often it has to do with

insecurity or the desire to impress . . .

So they copied the painting

signed their name

and sold the painting . . .

Is this a problem? . . .

Hybridization opens a door . . .

The confluence of theory

and autobiography . . .

a no-brainer as you walk off

to look for America . . .

Would you care to elaborate

on the unique building blocks

of your interiority

all magically held together

with Elmer's Glue? . . .

But these trifles

will suck the living daylights

out of your fabrication

leaving you picking nits . . .

rearranging the colors on your palette

with ultramarine blue

in the twelve o'clock position . . .

Read the draft

as if it's the first time

to see if you've veered too far

off the beaten path . . .

If you want to remake a point

just  go for it so to speak

in the moment

regardless that all hell

will break loose . . .

The normativity of stringing words

is choreographic . . . the listener

playing catch-up and enjoying it . . .

You were here . . . We were here . . .

just a moment ago . . . and now we're gone . . .

vaporized . . . poof! . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

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A voice warns don't sweat imprecision . . .

It's easy to drop names

gaslighting the insecure

into interpreting grocery lists

for identity thieves

posing as Alice in Wonderland

sacking drivebys

doubletalking wordplay

cluttering walkups . . .

Just think makeshift or landlubber

and you'll be fine and dandy . . .

Numbering your thoughts

will doubtless serve the same purpose

until the Uber arrives

to take you to the neighborhood

medical pop-up for a quick look . . .

And what’s with the local chapter

of hand wringers? . . .

They seem exasperated . . . but why? . . .

Imagine everyone elsewhere . . .

What then? . . .

Overdubbing the verbal miasma

will open the floodgates

to a double header

where you'll be able to enjoy

the warning track

without hitting the wall . . .

Calling out for pizza

has again jammed the works

of this run-around-in-circles

kind of day . . .

Addenda have lost

their sense of purpose . . .

You are sliding off the edge

of the looking glass

while documenting rapid physical changes

transformative changes . . .

curiouser and curiouser . . .

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You're freighted with imaginary concerns

highlighting text for tomorrow's comealong . . .

Someone called in a lockdown . . .

Confrontational aesthetics is today’s special 

with teams of horses circling the wagons . . .

The stop-and-go is standing down . . .

You are stop-actioned by the congestion

at the roundabout and throw the dice

out the window . . . A voucher for a turnaround

has been duly noted . . . Now tell me again

what led you to this . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You're calibrating a Bloch sphere

highlighting symbols in an aspiration space . . .

Cartoon characters are on deck

disturbing the peace

hammering the latest modifictions

you signed off on . . .

So it's good I guess that you've called in

for a personal day

the outer crust, the parched surface . . .

Nothing can be said

about the rhyming dictionary

that elbowed its way in

with detached conversations . . .

Someone just threw in the towel . . .

A long period of adjustment is about to launch . . .

Variable cloudiness is pouring in

with locals awaiting direction

like kites slipping along ramps of air . . .

an open-air theater

the fourth wall under construction . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You are released with a nametag

and operating instructions . . .

The Best of . . . leaks cantankerousness . . .

The opening was abysmal

with a smattering

of almost but not quite . . .

Reliving the future, yes?

with outtakes stuffing the iCloud

counting on Number Theory

to turn the tide of indifference . . .

What's the ETA? . . .

You had better plan for a rewrite

in cuneiform loaded with appositives . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Isn't it about time to finetune

the lawn tractor for a trip

to the seven wonders

of the neighborhood? . . .

The days when Oreos sandwich in . . .

The peeling paint on this two-story

hides a medieval mural with cryptograms

awaiting decoding . . .

You're enjoying a beefsteak tomato

from the neighbor's garden

thinking cello lessons

with the retired music teacher

down the block . . . back home

after a stroke . . . Your autofiction

pops up in a snow globe

on a piano in a doilied parlor

where a tabby kneads a dream

between bouts of stripping wax

at the elementary school

while visitors to the cemetery

across the road

place pebbles on the headstones

of little-known castrati . . .

The full catastrophe is on standby . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Gone

You have faced the final storm,

and now float, high above the seas,

guiding fellow sailors,

your last words, Goodbye, my love.
The days have begun to lighten;
the nights are open windows.
I turn the soil for a vegetable garden:
tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.
Rhode Island Reds appear
scratching for worms

with gnarled, yellow claws.
My grandfather, a blacksmith,

is here, too, from the dead,
a stubby Philip Morris

dangling from his lower lip.
He speaks to me, in Polish, about happiness.

Catherine Connolly (July 7, 1969 - April 5, 2012)

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You revisit memories

knowing that soon some will be overwritten

permanently deleted . . .

Several refuse to come out . . .

Others waffle . . .

A long ball into the right field bleachers

the runners advancing

too late now to rethink the gameplan . . .

You too had to be dragged in here

by the scruff of the neck

pockets turned out, shoes and socks removed,

trying to buy time, incoherent . . .

and then, of course,

the room you pretend doesn't exist . . .

Sorry, but the title has been reworked . . .

The scene rewritten . . .

Someone had to do it, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Voiceovers of dress rehearsals

with you in the wings

running lines for passersby . . .

the moment fanning out

to memories of desire . . .

And so it returns . . .

the insistence of wind

in the guise of the lost . . .

players cast about for alternatives

losing themselves in the paroxyms of reason

grief segmenting the past

making it more interesting

than it possibly could have been . . .

Antonio Palmerini