Jacket 16 - Eileen Myles

Scribner’s

There’s a little
more going
on here
than preservation

your water
tower against
the sky

your faded
message

two windows
mucking up
the S &
the I

still I know
it was 43rd St.
where I
badly slept
with you

my memory:
I was
perfect then

there’s more
than that
that’s going
on

just breathing
is rotting
everything

is burning
I’m probably
madly
in love with
you

but it’s her
I’m leaving
tonight or
me & my
lousy lies

so lolling
around in
another
lost home
with your
camera

checking perfection
before you
got film &
now I don’t
want those
damn pictures

the teletubby
transfixed
nailed to
some scaffolding
on 42nd St.

the poking tower
over the
dirty parking
lot wall

with the
yellow stripe

that’s right
I’m not
Mr. Teletubby

it was sad
every time
we took
a picture

this is a relationship
click
this is a relationship

if my cover
is an illustration
of me &
so is my
writing an
observation
of truth

not it
fucking scaffolding
right,
fucking burning

alive
Spring is so
perfect tonight
because outside
in the real
house the
birds are
shamefully true
hopping under
the hokey
sidewalk
furniture shitty
captured flowers
looking droopy

Rosie just
wants to
put her belly
on some cool
cement. Does.

I do this.
Appear to
be a bum
in my hiking
boots & hairy
legs I’m no
longer a dyke
just a man

hello little
bird.

Eileen Myles’ recent novel cool for you, published in 2000, traces the downbeat progress of a girl growing up in working-class Boston. She is the author of ten books of poetry including School of Fish andNot Me. In 1992 she ran as a candidate in the US Presidential Election and in 1995 she co-edited The New Fuck You : Adventures in Lesbian Reading (Semiotexte). Eileen Myles also writes art criticism.

Overland magazine feature

Eileen Myles

Scribner’s