Alisha Dietzman
God Loves You And Offers A Wonderful Plan For Your Life
To get high at the sad river beach
and name the water. To be what is called
a low-skill worker, dreaming about water
front or a pool, dolphin skinned. Our hot arms.
The only person in my dreams who ever dies
is my brother, and in water. I don’t know why.
I am on land, always, making futile motions. Poetry
is making futile motions. Maybe.
Poetry is also desiring an unattainable other,
I tell you, high, another time, in the rooms
of our small life. Eating cucumber
and soft white cheese. A man leaves
his number on the bar, says he is named
after a lake. I can’t stop myself: how beautiful.
(This is not the first time I’ve been told to read more Lacan.)
X
A deer in the screenlight.
Darkness over the earth that is forgetting.
The first line of La Bâtarde: my case is not unique:
I am afraid of dying and distressed at being in this world.
I loved you when you bought me a thong—
a word I’ve always liked sonically, like,
thresh, and thus, and hyssop. I want, truthfully,
to be purchased. It feels romantic.
O
O, overt O. Orgasm, The Story of
O, for example: just Job, but slick.
Order me another volcanic white.
Orpheus descended into hell for Eurydice.
Open me as I have opened you.
Outside: late, clean.
Organic shatter of hydrangeas
organized in shiny
outfits, lonely by the fruit display.
Oranges, oranges. Cherries.
Ornamental in my small, checked dress,
open-backed; I want to be beautiful,
occupying you, the minds of strangers, anyone.
Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
My pillow smells like porcelain.
You did not die those times
and we have a little money,
for excess: mesh, prosecco,
perfume called your arms full,
and your hair wet, I could not.
Look, I forget, maybe: memory and desire,
stirring. I’d wear unreal city. My whole life
I’ve loved how anything can be almost anything.
Alisha Dietzman is the author of Sweet Movie (Beacon Press, 2023), winner of the National Poetry Series.