The Four Seasons

By Ariana Reines Ariana Reines

Eight stars make

A soft solfege

Above this motel

Where there are never

Stars.

I let a skinny man

Put his long thick dick in me for you

So we could break our hearts

The way you want me to. Somewhere a white

Wall stretches up behind the backs of a tribe

Whose obscurity protects its secret from the common

World and the connivances it ordains.

What time is it. What season is it.

I don’t know.

The moon blows green

Gas into my skull

I want to hide what I dream

In a big boot, and wear the boot

And starve as I lean upon the boot of my destitution

And drag

The truth as a gimp would drag the weight of her body.

That would give me a feeling of honesty.

Source: Mercury (Fence Books, 2011)

Biography

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, poet, playwright, and translator Ariana Reines earned a BA from Barnard College, and completed graduate work at both Columbia University and the European Graduate School, where she studied literature, performance, and philosophy. Her books of poetry include The Cow (2006), which won the Alberta Prize from Fence Books; Coeur de Lion (2007); and Mercury (2011). Her poems have been anthologized in . . .

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