Jay Hopler

[from Jay Hopler's Green Squall, winner of the 2005 Yale Younger Poets Prize, judged by Louise Gluck]

And the Sunflower Weeps for the Sun, Its Flower

1
There is a hole in the garden. It is empty. I envy it.

Emptiness: the only freedom there is
In a fallen world.

2
Father Sunflower, forgive me — . I have been so preoccupied with
        my backaches and my headaches,
With my sore back and my headaches and my beat-skipping heart,

I have ignored the subtle huzzah of the date palms and daisies, of
        the blue daze and the date palms —

3
                                             Or don’t forgive me, what do I care?
I am tired of asking for forgiveness; I am tired of being frightened
        all the time.
I want to run down the street with a vicious erection,
Impaling everything, screaming obscenities
And flapping my arms; fuck the date palms,
Fuck the daisies —

4
As a man, I am a disappointment, I know that.
Is it my fault I was born in shadow? Through the banyan trees,

An entourage of slovenly blondes
Comes naked and begging —

5
My days fly from me as though from a murderer.
Can you blame them?
Behind us, the house is empty and quiet as light.

What have I done, Mother,
That I should spend my life
Alone?


Self-Portrait with Whiskey and Pistol

1
Of all the things this day turned out to be, a celebration of me
        was not one of them.

2
Maybe if I surrounded myself with prostitutes and strippers, my
        celibacy would feel less like a lack and more like an act
Of heroic self-denial.

3
My life and I live in the trees and share a tail.

4
Our stomach turns its peach pit to the moon!

5
Even if it’s true, what they say, that love is never a waste of time
        no matter how impossible the object,
You wouldn’t know it from living.
On this street.

6
How disappointing it all is!
The lemon trees, the banyan trees, the sky —
How disappointing it all is.

7
Look, the Great Poet of Solitude is pruning his roses!
(Even the way he does nothing is monstrous.)

8
O birds! O birds! Be not stingy with thy feathers white, I am
        washing my hands!

9
Cloudy or not, here I come —