2 Poems
Jameson Fitzpatrick
AFTER THE READING
I know what it means
when the old poet says he liked
my more complex poems
even more I know which ones
he means the ones I read for him
not him specifically but
because of the fact of him
there the kind of him he is
if not the hegemonic him entire
one of its many heads
Those are good poems
I’m not sorry to read them
not sorry I’m not sorry
to read the ones he means
are simple the means
of which are simple the fact
of my him in plain language
which is not his kind
of him which has gone out
which has done his hitch
with multitudes of hims
A him like that is mis-
understood
I mean no disrespect
to this old house
I live in you
stand under your roof
and it is respectfully
I ruin you with my living
Translator’s Note on “I Woke Up”
Political
1
posing
2
—obviously
3
blond.
4
Gender,
5
grieve
6
enabled.
7
1
He was forced to leave his homeland for political reasons.
In ideas those two political parties are worlds apart.
2
The model was posing carefully.
She is always posing.
3
Obviously they were putting him to a severe test.
Obviously he was lying.
4
Her long blond hair spilled down over her shoulders.
This blond man delivers newspaper every morning.
5
The language differs from English in having gender for all nouns.
Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.
6
Be sure and not grieve.
What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over.
7
His photographic memory enabled him to tuck away yards of facts.
Long practice enabled that American to speak fluently.
Jameson Fitzpatrick is the author of Pricks in the Tapestry (Birds, LLC, 2020).