Poems about night
and related poems. Paintings
about night,
sleep, death, and
the stars.
I know one poem from
school under the stars, but
belong to no school
of poetry.
I forgot it by heart. I remember only
it was set in the world and its theme
parted.
Poems
about stars and
how they are erased by street
lights,
streets
in a poem about force
in the schools within it. We learned
all about night in college,
how it applies,
night college under the stars where we
made love
a subject. I completed my study of form
and forgot it.
Tonight,
poems about summer
and the stars are sorted by era
over me.
Also poems about grief
and dance. I thought I'd come to you
with these themes
like my senses.
Do you remember me
from the world?
I was sat there and we spoke
on the green, likening something
to prison, something
to film.
Poems about dreams
like moths about streetlights
until the clichés
glow, soft
glow of the screen
comes off on our hands,
blue prints on the windows.
How pretentious
to be alive now,
let alone again
like poetry and poems
indexed by
cadence is falling about us while
parting. It was important to part
yesterday
in a serial work about lights
so that distance could enter the voice
and address you
tonight.
Poems about you, prose
poems.
Lerner, Ben, "Index of Themes" from The Lights. 2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Griffin Poetry Prize 2024 Finalist. Used with permission from The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.