The Poetry Section: Ana Bo�...¾ičević, "The Day Lady Gaga Died"

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

This week in The Poetry Section: two poems by Ana Božičević.

Rise in the Fall

It’s spring in Manhattan, but everyone’s wearing
summer dresses, through that bit of cold
that death. At the table next to mine, the young Brit and the witch

brainstorm about holding
enormous healings. At this point I’d settle for you

just trembling next to me. Don’t you know how to do that anymore?
Do you know how unhappy one is
who wants a ghost for a horse

when told that only the living can marry the living?
This poem’s boring. I dreamed some lesbian wrote a really good poem
called Pinko and

I woke up to a straight straight world.
Let’s sit here in the café for now. We’ll rise up

next fall, when they can no longer deport me.
And at the end of our revolution… It’s real hard to say what I’m seeing

I see, a planet?
the kind of green I can’t even describe
I’m falling asleep. I see

Pinko

They found me sleeping
on the tallest wave
blanket and all. They said my name and
down I wept-
next I stood on the sand and
the love pulled back
I could see the sea floor
all those hinges in the sand-grass
needed tongue-grease to work. I said Come back
and it came back in, like it forgave me

That’s all. Pinko was not even that good but
I can still change everything
about it.

We can change everything.

The Day Lady Gaga Died

What is this day: is it like a rainbow
an abstract I kinda grasp, is it a house with the white streamers on it
how can I get at it.

Once I knew a girl called herself Beauty
and her leather accessories Beasts.
So can things be what I name them, is that the secret.

Once on a time in Osteuropa
a girl lived who went to the Contours Club:
she touched herself on a Slope among the Sunclouds™.

That all sounds vapid. Yeah, I touched myself. Kind of fat,
never thought I was a natural, a star,
I just didn’t “get” the others. But you,
you don’t want to hear that part, you just want me to keep having sex
among the politics.

Fuck you: all I want to write about is
bumblebees, bumblebees.

New York School is because
you have to name things in New York.
Otherwise, too much exists

Ana Božičević was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1977. She emigrated to NYC in 1997. Her first book of poems is Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, November 2009), a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her fifth chapbook, Depth Hoar, will be published by Cinematheque Press in 2010. With Amy King, Ana co-curates The Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn. She works at the Center for the Humanities of The Graduate Center, CUNY.

You may contact the editor at [email protected].