Late Empire. Lisa Olstein

      1  A Poetics of Space

       *

      1  Where the Use of Cannon Is Impractical

      2  Shot Through

      3  So Long

      4  Achilles Really Loved That Girl

      5  Run Every Race As If It’s Your Last

      6  Consider Yourselves All “Debbie”

      7  Ready Regret

      8  Your Country Needs You

      9  Charismatic Megafauna

      10  Pioneer Me

      11  Then They Ate Their Horses

      12  The Canary’s Job Is to Die

      13  The Symptom Pool

      14  People Are Hanged Curtains Are Hung

      15  Unknown Beloved

      16  Blue Stragglers

      17  Cinders Of

        About the Author

        Books by Lisa Olstein

        Notes

        Acknowledgments

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

      BUILT FOR IT

      Maybe age or some other slow cooling

      of the limbs one day will will me

      from the water, from this desire to

      plunge my body in. I tried hot yoga once,

      once, winks the fireman on the park bench

      overlooking the sea. To be honest, he says,

      it felt like wearing full gear in a house fire.

      You should try Bikram, says the mother

      in workout clothes taking a sticker for her kid.

      Whose motives are ever pure? Let’s face it,

      tennis is mostly about the outfits even if

      it is what taught me how to go for the other

      girl’s jugular, that I should, even with her

      daddy watching. Want rings out in the house

      of the self and in the self the self must live.

      It’s Friday morning and I know what I’m doing

      here, but what’s everyone else’s excuse?

      There’s everything and nothing to want

      from the sea, the sea who does not answer.

      Complete refusal transforms itself

      into a kind of total acceptance, at least

      so it seems because one way or another

      our voices travel away from us and this is

      a relief. Code Red, the children scream

      every time they spy a crab. Dozens of men

      are killed, says the paper, and their wives

      are kept for single soldiers of the day’s conquering.

      Killed, we say, if a war zone. Kept, we say,

      if a woman. Love–love we say when the score is

      zero. Irrelevant, says the sea into which

      everything we throw away ends up, words.

      THIS IS OUR AMERICAN AMERICA HERE IS YOUR SON

      We bring the world to bed with us,

      its weather, its moving maps,

      and its wars. When the staff told

      the grieving chimp, tomorrow

      they’d bring her a baby, she understood

      her baby, the one three years ago

      whisked inexplicably away,

      not any baby, which is what

      they brought. Of course

      she wouldn’t touch it. Of course

      this lasted all day and into

      the night and by morning

      had been replaced by embrace.

      Kinship is a gun set to stun,

      circumstance a falcon striking

      midair. Tonight I know the head

      shot, I know the kneeling man.

      If you know a face, when you

      know a face, how you know

      a face is the way every part of it

      works together when, still a person,

      across a table a person laughs

      on just another sunny day.

      ARRANGEMENTS

      It’s November, so we’re talking politics

      and I’ve been personally selected to hear

      from Mark Ruffalo what it was he dreamt

      last night. This is when I begin to imagine

      his beautiful blurred head sinking into

      and somehow floating above a pillow

      very white and his beautiful blurred children,

      but no,