Dara Wier

 

Was


That was before there was no way to get to
The other side without going the long way around,
We hadn’t yet begun to take ourselves apart,
Oil was just beginning to know what it was,
Was wasn’t yet set in its matrix,
I saw tomorrow fixed on a star, on a barge,
Courage, someone said, was all the rage,
That was before we’d come to the cutting edge,
The other side might be the other side of a door,
We hadn’t yet finished half of what we started,
Oil was just burning over alphabets & mending,
Was was no stranger than night-blooming jasmine,
We hadn’t yet begun to know half of what we wanted,
There wasn’t any difference between what we started
Or we finished, or so said our new circular arguments

 

China

 I was accelerating and braking, one on top of the
other. I think I should be thinking more slowly.
I walked outside very quickly.

A hummingbird flew into me.
I open my mouth to let the hummingbird out.
Whether it leaves or not, I don’t know.

One day we’ll find a way to unmock what’s been
mocked. Unlock it and throw away the key.
It feels unlucky to throw a key away.

I said, what’s that, you said it’s "the sound of
man thinning out his kind" so we paused to listen,
until a dog started barking or a baby was crying.

When I fill a glass with water in the dark
I listen for when it’s almost reached the top.
It’s a sacrament in a religion I’m practicing.

A Throwing Away of Some Keys, a sacrament I’m
too unevolved to practice. What do you call nostalgia
for things that haven’t happened yet? Not regret,

no regrets, a willow is a very romantic tree, China,
not Babylon, is its native home, this is said of the
weeping kind most often depicted on cemetery stones.