Maxine’s body fought a war
with her clothing.
Her breasts shook 
to upset their carriage,
hips spread 
to unstitch her jeans. 
We watched day after day
the weakening hems, 
praying for the body,
the body, the body…
It was against reason,
but seemed so possible,
a loud tear, a sudden victory, 
her clothes unseamed,
their border overrun.

More poems from The Goodfish Poems

Check out other work in the Uncollected series here.

Taliesin. (248)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

Willem de Kooning lived as an illegal immigrant for his first thirty years in the United States. (249)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #Numbers

On one of Reader’s windowsills: framed photographs of his son and daughter, a scuffed baseball, a sunbleached knotted root plucked from the Ebro. (250)
#Reader/Protagonist #DM Map

Poe was expelled from West Point for refusing to obey military orders. Later, James McNeill Whistler would fail there academically. (251)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #DM Map

Why is it commonly referred to as the Arnolfini Marriage, or even the Arnolfini Betrothal, when she is seven months pregnant? (252)
#Speculation

Im Westen Nichts Neues. (253)
#DMBookshelf

Decades afterward, locked indelibly in Reader’s mind the last two pages of Good Morning, Midnight. (254)
#Reader/Protagonist #DMBookshelf #Numbers #GreatsOnGreats
The rape scene from The Fountainhead burned into mine.

Ernest Hemingway was an anti-Semite. (255)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #Bigotry

Ingenious nonsense, Isaac Newton dismissed poetry as. (256)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

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Neruda’s Book of Questions

Alexander Pushkin was an anti-Semite. (235)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

The Italian navigator has just landed in the New World. (236)
#DMquotations

Hegel had an illegitimate son. At his wedding, the boy’s mother showed up with a letter promising matrimony. And had to be bought off on the spot. (237)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

Protagonist is completely alone here now. (238)
#Reader/Protagonist

Protagonist has come to this place because he had no life back there at all. (239)
#Reader/Protagonist

102 Boulevard Haussman. (240)
#DM Map

Even on the coolest evenings, when she kneels at the grave, the woman is bareheaded. (241)
#Reader/Protagonist

Petrarch sometimes wrote letters to long-dead authors. He was also a dedicated hunter of classic manuscripts. Once, after discovering some previously unknown works of Cicero, he 
wrote Cicero the news. (242)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #GreatsOnGreats

Ananda. Having been Buddha’s cousin, as well as his favorite pupil. (243)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

The Gulf of Spezia. (244)
#DM Map

Masaccio died at twenty-seven. So suddenly that poison was not unsuspected, Vasari says. (245)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #ThisIsTheEndMyFriend

The eulogy at Puccini’s funeral was delivered by Benito Mussolini. (246)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #GreatsOnGreats

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Check out other work in the Light series here.

Huffy Henry hid    the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry’s side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don’t see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

By John Berryman

Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series.

Check out other work in the Hair-lo series here.

Though Homer insists she was mortal. (222)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

Aquinas knew almost nothing about history. (223)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

Maigret. (224)
#DMCastofCharacters

Does it go without saying that this upstairs presence would accentuate Protagonist’s sense of his aloneness? (225)
#Reader/Protagonist

Does it go without saying that he deplores being alone? (226)
#Reader/Protagonist

Vladimir Mayakovsky shot himself in the head. He may have been playing Russian roulette rather than definitely intending suicide.
But in either event had put on a clean shirt first. (227)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #ThisIsTheEndMyFriend

Mênin aeïde, thea. (228)
#DMBookshelf #DMquotations

George Gissing’s first wife became a prostitute. His second wife went mad. (229)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

No one nodding to him on the street in passing after all? Something more categorical? (230)
#Reader/Protagonist

I am completely alone here now? (231)
#Reader/Protagonist

Helen was not the first petticoat that caused a war. Says Burton in the Anatomy. (232)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #DMCastofCharacters #DMBookshelf #Bigotry

Check out other posts from the Markson Project here.

Check out other work in Caveat to Aspiring Immortals series here.