Alice Notley

1945 / Arizona / United States

From My Forehead

He seems to be in front helping me look out
of my foreheaded self. Listen to me:

prone night. I was its actual first child
cutting a path with my sword through its
vapors. Then I subdued night until
the desert was clear and a disk shone above.
I am the hero of the struggle between de-
spair and illumination, which is not a shaky
buoyancy but claritas. The name of life
or that you see at all. Just look. If you
kill yourself nothing will happen.
No choices but pedestrian actions a lying
story: you have done nothing. You
can be a detail — a scurrier — garbage
you leave, a fit of nerves, propagating that.
The front of my looking out pulls

beauty taking me taking you. The scab in the sky
is gone. We have to go beyond our calculations
and the small words. Why a golden fringe on shirt
come quickly riding the best horses. And
nux is what night the worthless was, as I
sang, We don't have to believe the petite poetries.
Hooves are pulling us across the yellow sands:
lost in a word, led in a word I got there.
I can never turn back, you see and you can never turn back.
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