The Britney Suite

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– Marina Tsvetayeva, “Poem of the End” (1924)

[All poets – yids]


For Dieter Riemenschneider & Jan Kemp

CONTENTS:

• SCHNEEPART, gebäumt, bis zuletzt … [Paul Celan]
• SNOWPART


• keith partridge y yo [Wendy Nu]


• ERZFLITTER, tief im …[Paul Celan]
• ORESPARK


• Nouvelle vague


• KALK-KROKUS, im … [Paul Celan]
• CHALK-CROCUS


• mr darling writes to penthouse forum [Wendy Nu]


• DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho … [Paul Celan]
• DARK


• It’s always too late / when you got nothing ...


• BEIDHÄNDIGE Frühe … [Paul Celan]
• BOTH-HANDED

Both-handed

You can be a good person and still be sexy
– Britney Spears

Beidhändige Frühe
holt sich mein Aug,
dann erscheinst du –

wieviel Möwengefolge
hat deine Stirn?

Seegängerisch knattert das Wort,
dem ich absagte, an dir
vorbei,

ein von Steinwut schwingendes Tor noch,
gesteh’s der
notreifen Nacht zu.

[29/9/69]

when is it not a question of last things?
– Paul Celan

BOTH-HANDED dawn
hold up my eye
till you appear

how many seagulls stall
above your forehead?

The word rattles like surf
my negative by
you

a stone-mad swinging door
give up
too earlynight

It's always too late

About 20 April 1970, around Passover, Celan went from the bridge into the Seine and, though a strong swimmer, drowned unobserved. ... Mail piled up under the door of his barely furnished flat. Gisèle called a friend to see if perhaps her husband had at last gone to Prague. On 1 May a fisherman came on his body seven miles downstream. …

People have said that Celan took his own life at forty-nine because valid speech in German was impossible after or about Auschwitz. Yet this was the impossibility that incited him … And he did speak – more validly than could ever have been imagined.

Maybe he felt too alone: “no one / witnesses for the / witness.”

– John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (1995)

It’s always too late
when you got nothing
– Nine Days

it’s always too late
when you got
nothing
walking in the rain
or under girders

seeing in a special way
the light from
buses, passing
did I ask you?
what?

too soon, no doubt
my friend is
Wendy
Wendy Nushe’s trying to
climb out