Fred Moten, "I lay with francis in the margin."

30xlace:

I lay with francis in the margin.

I lay with francis in the margin.
my plan without surrounding
was in tact. my shift was extra
vagrant. my grain was terrible

and in decision was immigrant
and trans, I’m just so sensitive
and flighty, but francis curls me
into violet cradling and reading

to prepare for bordering and a
foundation for numbering into
violent edging. francis, who’s so
careful in the sight of his mama,

in her recital of handing, in her
unsold morsels, keeps straight
to the ornament’s advance, man.
his lists are like knives and his

tongues, oh my god, are sweet as
maths. we’re like westerns in a
togetherness; viv richards is our
accident and unforeseen exam.

***

Fred’s recommendation:

There’s a book called Columbus Square Journal (Angel Hair Books, 1976) by William Corbett that I’ve never really been able to put down once he put it in my hand a little over thirty years ago. It’s a Boston book, a neighborhood book, of poems made by someone with an extraordinary eye and ear for the ordinary, for ordinary beauty. Bill’s one of the great contemporary American poets, and servants of poetry, and it’s time for everybody to recognize. Columbus Square Journal might be hard to find now but The Whalen Poem and Elegies for Michael Gizzi are right where you can get at ‘em. He’s in New York, now, and I can’t wait for what he sees and hears there everyday.

Fred at the Poetry Foundation;