“Lullaby (Sleeping Couple, 1909)” is two poems, composited. Fracturing the poem by the parentheses, both within its title & its body, gets you the preceding material.
“Lullaby” was an attempt at self-validation. I wanted to house (a lot of) unforgotten tenderness. I was playing with collage & realizing love; I was pinching myself asleep.
“Sleeping Couple, 1909” purposed to séance that same tenderness. I vassalized Schiele’s sketch in service to a personal anecdote, connecting & blending the two into one poem.
I was editing both during the same time period, so they shared much of the same DNA (Fraternal twins?). I hooked them into one work.
There are some issues with the formatting of the published version. In my original submission, the poem(s) visually overlapped but read in one bleed. The fade from the “Lullaby section” to the “SC1909 section” (“we sleep well and for long / (hung in the gulf like drying fruit…”) was meant to look different (sketch provided) — the parentheses indicating the shift into a dream/whisper register.
“Tremolo" reconciles with desire (an older form of tenderness). I stole the title, & much of the poem’s texture/density, from the My Bloody Valentine EP of the same name. I still love this poem for its honesty: it is sensed primarily, and forcefully, through anger & fear. There are some good lines in there too. The climax is a great way to end.
This one was originally much longer, & drafted as “Desire”. The poem, in that form, has since been cut up & reassembled into new versions of itself.
("Desire" excerpts)
