Olena Kalytiak Davis Quotes

When it's this windy doesn't it seem impossible
to grow old?

When the knock comes, it will knock

a certain reticence. It will leave
your door covered in white-knuckles.

And the windows will no longer breathe, they will die

like paintings. And you will no longer be
worrying the stars into meaning, they will already mean something

Something More Fragile Than This"

Quick
before our bodies turn themselves in,
with a reverence reserved for the dead touch me
because I want to remember how beautiful I am.
While Spring snows around us, cracking her eggs
on our windows, in her meager dress of yellowing-white,
because I want to rise into today.

So why the urge to render something
more fragile than this?
Why, always, the soul blowing glass?
The soul, once again, filling the lungs
with smoke because a memory of regret sweats
in the plastic sleeve of a family
album. Because there's a snapshot caught
between the pages of some thick book:
my heavy 20 year old frame setting off
the 60lb weight of a dying mother. Because
somewhere, there's a negative slide
of my heart. Because and because and because
I'm sure there's a photo
in some drawer that shows me dressed in black.

But I want to devote myself to the mystery
of this afternoon. I want to honor this falling night, worship the
hour vanishing
between six and seven. This moment
where I'm standing against myself and against you with a taste in my mouth
that's yolk.

With Bob Marley taking that one long drag
on the refrigerator door.

Let's sort the injury from the injured,
Asking: What field? What battle?

Is this the site of your disaster?

An emergency room full of old friends.
Someone asking: Recollect, if you will,
A poem of Pindar's: That which above all

Shines through everything. Shines through
Each thing present all around.

Everything quietly unconcealing in the golden hospital
Light. Here's the chart, the anamnesis, of how and when
We want to kill each other, let each other die.

We, the living, breathe
Although we have lost old friends.

We have left them behind like dirty bandages.
We have left them ripped open, wide.
We've left rooms saying: Fuck you
And you and you.

The Gauze of Flowers, A Love Poem"

Remember when we couldn't name it
because it was a meadow
wild with tulips, both bright
as snow and dull as fire?
Driving in circles to find
the right spot for our love, then
using a chair? My heart was still
an artichoke, layered and prickly
But you kept making me nest my face
in that one thick bouquet.

And just this morning my love
was briefly stuck in my throat
as I remember all the soil
and sadness, remembered seeing you
on certain streets and corners, remembered
all the rubble and clang. Remember

how it is and isn't fragile?
How it speaks in ears and fingers
takes days and hours still
it wants nothing and it wants more?

And just this morning
the flowers you brought home drank
in the sunrise, they fleshed themselves out
the way people do, shaking
the cold from their collars
as they move toward the fire,
rubbing together their hands, kindling
it back. Some days

we want our love to be fleshy.
But some days it's transparent.
It's like gauze.
It is and isn't fragile.

I dare you to name it.
I dare you to remember
the rubble and clang.

O, to be stung by an errant bee. O, to sting.
O, to see you again. Covered in spring.

The sky has stopped
offering you reasons to live and your heart is the rock
you threw through each window
of what's deserted you, so you turn
to the burnt out building inside you: the scaffolding
overhead, the fallen beams,
the unsound framework;


according to the blue that's printed on the inside of your arms
you have no plans, no plans
uncovered, or uncovering: the offing is emptying,


the horizon empty


now that your sanity is
a tarp or a bedsheet
in the rough hands of the wind,


now that everything is hooded
in drop cloth.


It didn't happen
overnight. Or maybe it did:


your heart, the rock;
your soul, the Gothic barn.

You should bury more than the dead.
You should try harder.
You should give up.