The sun dissolves through
the window. Three weeks
in my condo—only texts
or dog walks, the grocery
store quickly with my head down—
grief still lines the aisles
in uniform boxes. No people, person
to come home to, to bring me food
because he doesn't want me to be
hungry. Nobody to drive me
to a simple procedure if I need
a simple procedure. For a moment
I feel like something good
might happen, like when I was young
in a humid city trying on tight shirts
with my shoulders back, thinking I,
too, could have a story. I'll spend
the night cleaning the kitchen, wiping
crumbs to the floor, sweeping,
opening something else I bought
that I'll only look at once. A body
untouched is still a body
I used to believe. Nothing of anything
will ever be enough. My mother
is dead. I wasted so much time.
Why is this so hard to say?
from the book STOP LYING / University of Pittsburgh Press
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Headshot of poet Ben Lerner
Ben Lerner Discusses New Book with Jesse Nathan

"It’s all absurd, how much of my life is ringing (wringing?) small changes on (from?) these words and phrases as they fall across margins, and yet every time recontextualization yields a new possibility of meaning, a blue spark rises in the dark." 

via MCSWEENEY'S
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Cover of "The Margins"
What Sparks Poetry:
Cindy Juyoung  Ok on Other Arts

"'Home Ward (Seoul, Korea, 2012)' approximates the physical layout of a room. My memory of the real room, one of the last where my grandfather stayed, is marked by the concentration of patient beds in a rectangular space that, if empty, I would have considered a wide hallway."
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