LISA FISHMAN

Analysis

It was the hidden quality of genitals

originally compared, in a reworking of Winnicott

one told to you. Then the quotation could enter

zero as a great

divide. But I would like to be here, not her

average cadabra loom. And the mouse was as big as the girl

the doctor knew. How to convey

that precisely, how sure

to be a color rinsed the vine or what

your hands were stained with coming true.

Reading

A number of transitional objects

starting with one

may be meant.

There are certain things I don’t mean.

What a pleasure to say.

A pattern in four parts?

Loft, bed in the loft,

a float,

pool. He was her

favorite boat, he mothered

her.

I want to shoot the birds

she sometimes thought.

There is so much that happens

in the little words.

[from] Chime

They were not to ask her questions in winter

even ecstatic

going down the slide. Out of

a self a like

condition:

“He put a tiny pond of rain water in his wife’s ear

while she slept. And leaned over to listen to it.”

Askesis is the opposite of going out.

Did we ever talk about math?

someone I didn’t know once

if you rearrange it like that. As, in, an

elevator up up up and not chime shut.

Now you can lie about the laundry

Hilda is hungry enough to eat.

Now lie of leaves, Mercutia

the yard gets strummed.

Lisa Fishman's third book, The Happiness Experiment, will be out in March (Ahsahta Press). She has recent work in Volt, American Letters & Commentary, Five Fingers Review and elsewhere; her second book, Dear, Read, was published in 2002 (Ahsahta). She teaches in the MFA program at Columbia College, Chicago.

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