Citations: poems by Lou Garcia-Dolnik

By | 31 October 2021

Aubade

I am overextended. The poem forgets me
but the city says here. Image.

Lights unbury the bodies of abandoned bicycles.
The river architecting assembly lines of women

forgetting their boyfriends. Somewhere
a rave I’m not invited to. The distended dark. Silhouette

of pyjamas, four walls. Joint smoke. The winter shower,
articulate. Splay books over the bed. Courier boxes,

the voided cabinet. Naked feet betray the season’s imperative.
Today, I drink tea. Tomorrow, count the socks that have shrunk

after laundering. Call home. The heart is louder
further from the equator. A little softer, I beg, repatriated

to my supplicant body. Joint pain. The air leaves me gasping.
Most roads lead to coat check. Someone texts me there is hole

in the shape of my person where I left. I left my life
in a city which does not remember me.

This poem riffs on Emily Jungmin Yoon’s ‘Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today’

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