I've hardly taken to any life at all
that is a penchant for falling, a syllable
wreathed reckless on the air
that I don't mean, or measuring

has habited us to complicated beds
where we do or do not say the things
we are. I've taken to adjusting from afar

the work we vitalize or will not keep
among us like appropriated tasks
we spill our life across, wanting to watch

what happens when the will is washed
like blue jeans, tightens up, and holds us
clasply in its fit, our haunches rectified
uneven, like something proved by what we have not given.

 

 

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Lisa Samuels is the author of LETTERS, The Seven Voices, War Holdings and, most recently, Paradise for Everyone, published by Shearsman Books in April 2005 and from which this poem is drawn. In addition to poetry, she has published work on modernist and contemporary writers, intellectual property in the humanities, and critical practices. She currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.