AFTER MAYAKOVSKY
It’s after one. You’re probably alone.
All night the moon rings like a telephone
in an empty booth above our separateness.
Now is the hour one answers. I am home.
Hello, my heart, my god, my president,
my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm
clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm
from darkness’s fat ear. This accident
that was my life will have its witnesses:
now, while the world lies wholly motionless
and sorry in a crapulence of stars,
now is the hour one rises to address
the ages and history of the universe;
I swear you’ll never see my face again.
Denis Johnson wrote only poems for a while, and a lot of them. His third book, Incognito Lounge, showed a voracious imagination and relentless voice. Both of these have found full expression in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tree of Smoke.
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