Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles is the former artistic director of St. Mark's Poetry Project, and current director of the creative writing program at UC San Diego. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Skies, School of Fish, On My Way, and Maxfield Parrish, as well as the author of a collection of stories, Chelsea Girls, and the novel Cool for You.

HOME

It's not where I write
it's where I vegetate

- - - -

a bathroom scale
on the sidewalk &
I step on
145 that can't be true
into the face
of a girl going by
She bows her head
don't make me know
what you know
don't make me see

I criticize the end
of a thought

more open gliding on
thru

on the 28th of April
heading back

Allen envied me
to just have
a life
[being in Russia
as no one
not him]

I love her anonymity
the marquis
from the dentist
chair the one little
rotten tooth
in a building

I write down
so I wake up
you probably think
I'm like
him too
busy to be

me but
I'm exactly
that
the tree
coming
back in a crack.

Lee Ann
I was ungenerous
standing on the
sidewalk looking
for them

I thought if
I inventoried home it would be broad
my eyes fling open
like a doll's
to the virtual space that suddenly
resembles the walls
the most interesting artists are large;
monsters
while the people we know are
masses of flowers
& when I turn
on my cellphone I see
everyone

holding my cell to the art
holding my cell at dinner
you guys: we're

all here.

It's like now that you've lived
with my mother
perhaps you
will enjoy
this imitation

in my writing class
the student
depicted the shrinkage
of her mom's
mom. It's so good
I said. The mortality
so affecting
creeping
them out
till I shrink
to a bone in my chair
you could use an outline
he said; I feel
you're just throwing
stuff at us
slam a pie in his face
are those pigeons
cooling down. Coo-
cone cone cone
yeah my life