Ulrikka S. Gernes

A FRAYED OPUS FOR STRINGS

and wind instruments

and a lit bicycle shed

in the backyard; all that desire

constrained in shuddering

apartment blocks from where

my mind wanders

on daylong steep mountain paths

only to curl up

against your sleeping back

on a bespoken globe.

ALL NIGHT LONG I PARTICIPATE IN A QUIZ SHOW, WAKE UP

before it airs, live, exhausted as if having just run

a marathon I must yet again reconsider

my life, moored to the rainbow; a little later

I’m on the train to Herlev as though that’s the solution;

the woman on the seat across from mine speaks Uzbek

loudly into her cellphone; outside the station an older

couple is handing out The Watchtower, for free they say

and refuse to take my coin; concrete, graffiti, a heavy

puff of hawthorn, I kick a fir cone quite a ways

down Violinvej, I’m travelling through space,

Earth’s rules of play appear to me immensely

provincial, especially regulations concerning

parking; my vessel has been confiscated, and I’m

lost without you.

K WAS SUPPOSED TO COME WITH THE KEY, I WAS

to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time,

the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed,

outside the gate. I waited a long time, waited

and waited, waited a very long time. I stood

next to the security guard from Securitas, who also

stood outside the gate. I waited, the security guard

from Securitas just stood there, he wasn’t waiting,

it was his job to stand there, he didn’t take

any breaks, he just stood there, keeping an eye

on what he was supposed to keep an eye on. K

didn’t show up. I waited. When the security guard

from Securitas finished his shift I went home

with him, sat down across from him at the kitchen

table, ate spicy meatballs on rice, summer cabbage

followed by green tea and mango from Brazil.

In the night he laid his human hand between

my shoulder blades before we both stumbled

across the threshold into a brand new now.

NIGHT-BLACK SILVER, JANUARY’S LUMINOUS

morning-darkness leaves behind its blacking,

rubbing off on everything I touch.

It could be worse, it could

always be worse, but could it

be better? No, never better than

this moment, it’s perfect, it’ll never

come back. The child sleeps,

the cat plays with its tail, traffic

sighs past on Falkoner Allé. I jot this down

in the margin of the newspaper, drink

a cup of tea, somewhere someone

opens a book, the year has just begun,

and life, the late dawn sneaks in,

polishes the dark spots clean.

No More Now. Even Fear Has Fear. Even Of Itself.

I refuse to be lonely. No longer. It’s enough now.

Language contradicts itself, constantly producing

additions, disclaimers and footnotes. And the body

never gets ready, nails grow out, and hair, in the strangest

places. Here is the mountainside is black with lemons.

At the very moment I rest within my contour a dam

breaks. Maybe there’s a connection. I am someone

who…bounded by skin, is alone. I say it again, as loud

as I can: not another word! Maybe everything is connected.

Several thousand kilometers away you move your hand.

And here everything is instantly flooded.