THE BERTH OF METAPHYSICS
(some say very) soon
most of what we see
will be inauthentic
or sufficiently so
then no use steadying
ourselves reacting
to indignities by then
all resistance will
be enacting what we
want instead of
whelping about what
is and should not
be soon enough
(some hope very soon)
images will index
symptoms beyond
time and space and
invention is the only
match for pure blather
abasement of
faculties of
discernment
UNTITLED IMITATION POEMS
Glowing cottages at dusk.
You are a pyromaniac.
But I am just another thief of fire.
What useless ubiquity are poets.
What spent utensils like
Diced lamplight through screens
Falling like majestic brass
Or sometimes dirge draining
Onto private yards. Legions
Of realists’ greeny bowels. Dreamers.
Same thing.
*
Pigs! Scabs! Heat!
Hideous midweek recreations
So much gangland insignia
Men of much eloquence
Arrayed in a tight curl
Solve the muse and
Skirmishes resume
Doing devotions
Stapling badges to breasts
Burning with jealousy
To petition blessings
That’s where, that’s when
Things get strangely downright
*
Shopping carts scrape
Through the neighborhood
On recycling night
Furrows in transponder coverage
*
This benevolence called boy
Is mottled is a puddle
Of ciphers of enormous
Incidents of principle
*
No more spats with ulterior reality!
No more tonic!
*
No more time of day!
No more choke points!
*
A long moment of flat earth
And then the putrescible
Creep of the cliff
Patrick Durgin is the author of PQRS (2013), and a collaboration with poet, translator, and language justice organizer Jen Hofer: The Route (2008). From 2015-2017 he co-curated the Festival of Poets Theater in Chicago, and since 2007 he has taught literature, philosophy, art history, and visual culture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A limited edition of the chapbook French Unpublished Poems & Facsimile 1958-1960, by Miyó Vestrini, her early work written in French, was published with Durgin’s English translations by Letra Muerta in 2021. He's currently at work on a second, expanded edition of Hannah Weiner's Open House, to be published by Nightboat Books. The first edition was published by Kenning Editions, which Durgin founded and ran for over 25 years.