New Writing

Andrew Maxwell

Literature

What is a sufficient distance now
that you’re across the way or someone else
Now that you’re apart from someone else

I read it I think it’s a long way away

Away yeah where does the read go
Do we know or can you draw it up
from your life, your life we’re reading
Now that I may anticipate it and go there
As if turning to the page

Did a monkey take a hold of it and go
with a bucket, with a notion to go
With what, a paper lantern, the life

The light you know, here in the page

What did the monkey take a hold of
and turn the page

Did the monkey memory do it, push
A tile in a pulpy ditch, along
The struts of the page

And do you remember
where else, yeah what, oh

where did it go, up into the air
or somewhere real, did it go upstairs
and into the mist, did it go and give it a face?

I heard it said oh no what

The entity type lords over
and you remember something
And it’s fuzzy to the touch

It’s a monkey or it’s a reader
Is the literature inconsistent?

What are we facing now

You smile from a distance
What are you smiling at, fugitive

Who’s got into you?

Andrew Maxwell read at SPT with Liz Waldner on February 15, 2002