CHRISTOPHER JANKE
POSTHUMOUS LOVE POEM 10
my leave
taking remains
a taking from
you who
remains and
from whom
like you felt
the taking
while what took
gained no
thing in the
wake of its
taking and it
I would
have liked to
have called
mine but
when I could
call anything
therefore call
and hold
you I
now they
was not
yet remains
TRANSLATION OF POSTHUMOUS LOVE POEM 10
for slow years we touched
fingers to fingers fingers to
backs backs to fronts there
was no way to prep
what would we have done
that would have been something
other than a premature
losing pretending to leave
before any leaving needed
to be done or instead did
we do a pretending of
that no leaving ever would
pass we lay side by side
convinced there would be
sides forever to be next to
or roll on top of and push
fronts to fronts like mouths
all over and now when
there is no front of me
to be in front of you the fingers
now digits seem as if they
give the grand fuck you
all the cells tied together
in the body and all the bodies
tied together in the mind and
what remains after all my
leaving is like I have broken
into your heart and stolen
a part and then run away
to bury it but when i open
my hanky it’s my own beating
inside except it’s
no longer beating at all
POSTHUMOUS LOVE POEM 11
there were these
attempts to keep
to keep myself
on a kind of path
to hold the objects
i had been told
to hold to stay
with those who
brought me here
inadvertently to
stay with those
who seemed
familiar on first
meeting attempts
to be the achievement
of myself as if
in containing my
movement there
was a possession
of a kind of treasure
when now though
not meant to
be an insult
as i scatter
across a surface
all i had thought
important for me
these things
to keep when
i thought myself
able, able
to keep
TRANSLATION OF POSTHUMOUS LOVE POEM 11
in keeping with keeping
those priorities we measured
lengths to which we went
lengths we measured used tools
remember the rearrangement
of the bathroom, turning
the toilet so it backed
against a different wall
and all the shadows
changed, the sun moving
only when we did
and measured time and
lengths of time scheduled
visits with matthew and
sarah, thomas and rhonda,
tried to get a time when
the ones with children
could get away for dinner,
the lengths to which we
went and strained
to hear the chorus
was it silent or just
confusing the laughter
and the weeping or
perhaps the singing
was for a different
play on a different
stage, nearby, or maybe
on the same stage,
all movement layered
over moment over
movement but that
talk of layering is
just a way to think
just a way to talk
when motion really not
a kind of talking no
priority nothing to measure
nothing that could
in the end be put
in a field penned
by a fence kept
by a pen on
the wrong stage
or maybe just
moving and not
on a stage at all and
no keeping when
time was just
some kind of sound