Dara Barrois/Dixon
1000 Sam Elliotts, 100 Agnès Vardas
Our habit on empty afternoons had been
to walk down an old long plain dusty dirt road
right up to its edge at the end of the world
Back then it was a long time before
most of us believed the end of the world
started at the end of a road
---that day we'd been talking about
100 drawings of Agnès Varda &
1000 drawings of Sam Elliott
We were surrounded by storm clouds
building make-believe urban cityscapes
and killdeer herding their innocent chicks
Cicadas buzzed and crickets scraped
it was typical of us to linger at the edge
of the end of the world & so we did
It was typical for us to spend time there
enjoying the unendingly distant view
and, on this day, Elliott’s and Varda’s beauty
We could be influenced by whatever
we stumbled upon
on our way to the end of the world
On this day we could see a cloud burst coming
and so we walked away from the end’s edge
faster than usual, so fast we could see another road
Inside the one we walked on every day
& there by the side of the road
lay a wooden tablet, 9 x 9 x 3
With signs carved into it
we understood we were meant to take it
home with us, which we did
Drawings of Sam Elliot, drawing of Agnès Varda and Catalpa Press’s 2019 edition of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste (original published 1825), in some circumstances considered a seminal work of writing about food, in particular, Catalpa Press’s p. 49, Meditation 10, The End of the World, we were looking to see when the end of the world as we know it, switched from being a place to being a time and it comes to me now, I failed to mention how this all took place during days, co-incident, co-existent, to when my beloved was reading nothing but books in translation written by writers from Middle Eastern or North African regions, and just now, as it happens, am I wondering though have no way of knowing if his reading provided him room to investigate narrative, free from our culture’s autobiographical experience and opinion, the way ancient poems provide immensely freeing occasions to experience poetry with no or very little prejudice ---last night my beloved spoke to me in a dream saying, and this is why I want to see another summer, and after that, if you will, then will be a good time to close the parenthesis.
Dara Barrois/Dixon is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including In the Still of the Night (Wave Books, 2017), You Good Thing (Wave Books, 2013), Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2009), Remnants of Hannah (Wave Books, 2006), Reverse Rapture (Verse Press, 2005, 2006 SFSU Poetry Center Book Award), Hat On a Pond (Verse Press, 2002), and Voyages in English (Carnegie Mellon, 2001). Also among her works are the limited editions (X In Fix) in Rain Taxi’s Brainstorm Series, Fly on the Wall (Oat City Press), and The Lost Epic, co-written with James Tate (Waiting for Godot Books, 1999). Her writing has been supported by The Lannan Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, National Endowment for the Arts and The American Poetry Review. In 2005 she held the Rubin Distinguished Chair at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. recent books are Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina, from Wave Books, and Extremely Expensive Mystical Experiences for Astronauts, from Conduit Books.Our habit on empty afternoons had been
to walk down an old long plain dusty dirt road
right up to its edge at the end of the world
Back then it was a long time before
most of us believed the end of the world
started at the end of a road
---that day we'd been talking about
100 drawings of Agnès Varda &
1000 drawings of Sam Elliott
We were surrounded by storm clouds
building make-believe urban cityscapes
and killdeer herding their innocent chicks
Cicadas buzzed and crickets scraped
it was typical of us to linger at the edge
of the end of the world & so we did
It was typical for us to spend time there
enjoying the unendingly distant view
and, on this day, Elliott’s and Varda’s beauty
We could be influenced by whatever
we stumbled upon
on our way to the end of the world
On this day we could see a cloud burst coming
and so we walked away from the end’s edge
faster than usual, so fast we could see another road
Inside the one we walked on every day
& there by the side of the road
lay a wooden tablet, 9 x 9 x 3
With signs carved into it
we understood we were meant to take it
home with us, which we did
Drawings of Sam Elliot, drawing of Agnès Varda and Catalpa Press’s 2019 edition of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste (original published 1825), in some circumstances considered a seminal work of writing about food, in particular, Catalpa Press’s p. 49, Meditation 10, The End of the World, we were looking to see when the end of the world as we know it, switched from being a place to being a time and it comes to me now, I failed to mention how this all took place during days, co-incident, co-existent, to when my beloved was reading nothing but books in translation written by writers from Middle Eastern or North African regions, and just now, as it happens, am I wondering though have no way of knowing if his reading provided him room to investigate narrative, free from our culture’s autobiographical experience and opinion, the way ancient poems provide immensely freeing occasions to experience poetry with no or very little prejudice ---last night my beloved spoke to me in a dream saying, and this is why I want to see another summer, and after that, if you will, then will be a good time to close the parenthesis.