{"id":79,"date":"2011-05-18T15:30:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T19:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/?page_id=79"},"modified":"2011-05-18T15:30:36","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T19:30:36","slug":"weitzman","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/past-issues\/issue2\/weitzman\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry: Erica Weitzman"},"content":{"rendered":"

from \u201cStudies\u201d<\/em><\/h2>\n

III<\/h2>\n

As if I\u2019d signed a peace with forgetting
\nall my abandoned fetishes are returning to make their claims:
\nAvenue des Limites<\/em>\u2014all that weird suburban Euro-stucco
\nmeans it\u2019s time to turn around now, go back to that domestic
\ncognitive dead end from whence you came. A silence filling up
\nwith dead leaves; and in the kernel of each leaf, a silence. Otherwise
\nstalk the exotic in moldy drainpipes, tamed incest, eroticized
\nmotes of dust. Study three: if trying to find a way out is the way out,
\nwe are left toying with our quietude, like a shiny penny
\nor map of the village, folded and refolded, as if the creases gave
\nunto our new life some softly cordoned-off road to have come.<\/p>\n

IV<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s get that anger started, ooh, that\u2019s it, purring like a kitten,
\nand suddenly you\u2019re God again, just like in childhood. Snake oil
\nplaydates for the innocent among us, and for the rest of you, you cynics,
\ngo and bear down harder on your pens. Funny how things volunteer themselves
\nwhen you\u2019re not thinking too clearly, the autoerotic fantasies
\nwe don\u2019t share by definition, or shouldn\u2019t. Shoulder to shoulder
\nin front of the abyss: that\u2019s politics for you, steaming mineral bath fragrant
\nwith methane and ammonium under a riot of gold leaf and
\ngrinning cherubim. The trick is how to keep on hating
\nwhen everything is designed to seduce. Study four: God
\ndoesn\u2019t love the world. He lusts after it. All the difference.<\/p>\n

V<\/h2>\n

Neither platform nor praise. Yellow-orange crepe
\nof the squash blossoms, fanned open over their leather fruit
\nin the cool of early morning. So this is what is called a
\nformal experiment, or, psychology as idiom, or, I swear to God
\nI am not here anymore to sponge the sweat from your existence,
\njustify your sex, or crank the rusty motor of meaning. I remember
\nsummer hail, hard BBs of ice in the eye of heat, miraculous as a plague.
\nStudy five: because you have to begin by loving your lies, say, red leaves
\nand the commonweal, welterweight, or two-by-six detail
\nwith assorted enjambments. Why not. Why ever not.
\nO friend, go with me at least on this one.<\/p>\n

ERICA WEITZMAN received her M.A. in poetry from Boston University in 1999. Her writing has appeared in 6×6<\/em>, The Brooklyn Rail<\/em>, Ars<\/em>, and the anthology Cabin Fever<\/em>; a chapbook of translations of Albanian poetry is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse. Erica is currently a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at NYU. She lives in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

(c) Copyright 2006, Erica Weitzman; author retains all rights.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from \u201cStudies\u201d III As if I\u2019d signed a peace with forgetting all my abandoned fetishes are returning to make their claims: Avenue des Limites\u2014all that weird suburban Euro-stucco means it\u2019s time to turn around now, go back to that domestic cognitive dead end from whence you came. A silence filling up with dead leaves; and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":71,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79\/revisions\/81"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}