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1 " I’m learning geography is about lossand so I keep moving "
― Paul Guest , My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge
2 " No, I didn’t wait for youor sleep much at allor raise one hope like a rag to wipe my lost face. "
― Paul Guest , Notes for My Body Double
3 " Beside you I failed to dream of anything else. "
4 " Here is the topography of false starts. Herea whole constellation is lousy with desire.Here what passes for love is the sameas anywhere. Here no one has saida prayer for the stars, and here no onecomes, except to leave, except to staylong enough to bruise. "
― Paul Guest , The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World
5 " When I say to you,I have seen the black floor of the ocean,you should know betterthan to believe me in that moment.My heart was broken, then,and my arms were no goodat all. These words are what was leftof my breath. I amso very tired of time and of waitingfor nothing to change. "
― Paul Guest
6 " Like love.Here I am, waiting on the nightto press up against the worldas though all stillness were penitence.Or practice for your arrival.For your body. For the sum of all your cells.from “Eros Poetica "
― Paul Guest , Because Everything Is Terrible
7 " What will I do with my daysnow that my nightsare sublimely aloneand how will I make use of this woundI carried like a mapso that I would never, neverlose you?from “In Praise of the Defective "
8 " And there are nightswhen I can’t speak,not even to the windin the strange tongue of the dark pine trees. "
9 " I’m learninggeography is about lossand so I keep movinginto closets that never smell like you.I’m learning not to ordereverything and want nothing.My mouth is empty. The words won’t stay.— Paul Guest, from “Airport Letter 2,” My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge (Ecco, 2008) "
10 " I don’t know howto free my hear— Paul Guest, from “Presumptive Elegy for Ken,” The Southern Review (Vol. 56. no. 4, Autumn 2020) "
11 " Tonight, after love–and what is a night without itbut darkness,and what is love without this nightbut more darkness?–I will sing to you.I will recite to youthe genealogy of shadows,revealing the ease of their couplingand, in turn, our own,softly attended bythe lustrous choir of firefliesoutside our window,who wait for a wordto rise and take wing,— Paul Guest, from “Small Wonder,” The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World: Poems (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2003) "
12 " Maybe you need to embrace disappointment.The way you don’t sleep at night,dreaming of dry dust on furnitureand the pleasant odor of plywoodand what it feels like to peel skin offof your thumb. Maybe you should beginthat perfect novel which willsave you. Pluck you from the ruddy jawsof a monster that is right therebeyond your failing sight. Not today,Satan, or Ronald Reagan—you learn that often enough evil is not aboutnuance. It was rainingthe day I was bornand years later I haven’t learned much moreabout the stars: fireand cold light afloat in the murk of the cosmos.Last night I read aboutthe doctors who removed 526 teethfrom a boy’s dying jaw:hours in they feared there was no end to it.That his pain was infinite.Their hands trapped.Bits of white bone arrayed in a spiralbeside his sleeping faceand it was lovely and an evidence of the divine.Well, not really. Maybe youaren’t real, aren’t listening to the windas it goes through the nightlike a sad prayer beneath the stippled sky.Maybe. Just maybe things will get better.Give it a year. "