from Precarity
04.11.13 – 04.20.13
wandering they are all wanderers the old people say with the luxury
of being such not having been
forced into chains in the end the
old people say de Angulo was looking for home sand swept up
over lumbar
curve lost tribe of we what I like most above all or
was it
Oppen’s clarity the island how far off the coast realizing
it wasn’t he who said it difficult to know what one means to be
serious and to know what one means
04.21.13 – 04.30.13
and we who will have become
was it the present are now the present the boy on the other side
of the barred patio raking leaves could as well have been
me the boy
the exile
calls in to seal his letter Oppen in exile in Mexico Paco
de Lucia in Mexico on vacation dead yesterday no now two days ago
of a heart attack playing evidently with his
children on the beach this
day not
05.01.13 – 05.10.13
this day still though to say I was here that this happened that
this place exists or elsewhere just as well the fort walls scattered
around the bay
built of coral discourse of the present condition hard
as the present condition discourse of coral kora
coracle here and now
signifying presence still though we are not free from constraint
or else have
freed ourselves too well and now find ourselves nowhere
now here now there for a few hours
George Life lives at present in North Carolina, and over the past few years has lived variously in China, Panama, and Tucson, where he received an MFA from the University of Arizona. His poems can be found online at Spiral Orb and The Dictionary Project. Among other things, he is working on a selected translation of the late poems of Du Fu, some of which have appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. He blogs at periplumvia.blogspot.com.
