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.
Alisha Dietzman is the author of Sweet Movie (Beacon Press, 2023), winner of the National Poetry Series.