HUNGER MAGAZINE

ANNE GORRICK

29. THINGS THAT MAKE ONE’S HEART BEAT FASTER

Play                              To pass a place where babies sleep in a room where incest flares
                                    Note their elegant Chinese even if not seen
in                                 Always to produce someone else’s interior pleasure

Chinese                         Extend in elegant Chinese to consider become cloudy
                                    Smell their evening gowns, washed hair
gate                               even if not, an inside sees

made                             Sparrows dissipate their young
                                    visit a gentleman for arrest
night                             even if an inner part does not see

Mirror                          Paradise wastes its people
                                    extended relative elegant the Chinese mirror
and                               to consider time he has become cloudy
                                    A gentleman for the automobile
not                               apprehension before the relative gate
                                    Hats washed scented with the night dress on exactly
it

                                    Exactly if that one has broken does not see
                                    Product of these blood tapes only
                                    always an internal pleasure

Cloudy                          The night is previous
                                    one without acknowledgment startled
over                              The children play in sleep spaces
                                    A Chinese mirror to consider time
a                                   The night is preceding inspections of him

visit                              To consider time for visit cloudy
                                    for torn a necessity
this                               Impregnate to inform

and                               Because she is a form of propaganda
                                    For wash scented night wrap function
wash                             Accurately, if this is the internal one
                                    was always broken not to come
it                                  Not these adhesive tapes, an internal pleasure

                                    The night proceeds beyond recognition

Note: Written at the end of the second millennium, this poem is a rethinking, a modernization of a section from “The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon” which was written at the end of the first millennium by a court lady during the Heian period in Japan.