ORAL HISTORY
Loneliness makes of you
a private language. In that
sentence, you sleep. Outside
of your hour, time's other ridge
making its promise: this you
can step in and out of pain
with practice. The dream’s order,
like your language, is loose. In its arrow,
you just walk. My big missed connection.
No arc to it, no redeeming crevasse.
If you call, I will pick up the phone.
Grains in its wire of silence.
FORMAL MUSIC
how did you come to tick like a minuet?
spare and assembled to a count, you mean
written down to be practiced, which entails
repetition until the sharpest point of performance.
spared and assembled, you mean to count
the notes living on the surface of glass,
repetition until the point of performance sharpens
the resonance, blows it across your hands.
the notes live on the surface of glass
and migrate down into floor, into oil
that resonates its blow across your hands.
texture exists to push you outside your eye
which migrates down, into oiled floors of
wealth with a kink for selective preservation.
texture exists to push you, but outside, your eye
ticks like a minuet, asking how you came to you
Biographical Statement
Paul S Ukrainets is a trans poet/writer and translator living in Oakland. They're an incoming writer-in-residence at Good Hart. Their work appears in Hayden's Ferry Review, Nightboat Books' "Permanent Record" anthology, and the Seventh Wave. They received their MFA from the Michener Center for Writers. They are materially and ideologically committed to a free Palestine.