Mark DuCharme
Mark DuCharme’s sixth full-length book of poetry, Here, Which Is Also a Place, was published in 2022 by Unlikely Books. That same year, his chapbook Scorpion Letters was released by Ethel. Later this year, C22 Open Editions will publish his collection Thousands Blink Outside. His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Blazing Stadium, Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Eratio, First Intensity, Indefinite Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Spinozablue, Talisman, Word/ for Word, The Writing Disorder, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, he lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
When the page is the sum total of my nerve
Only then, I’ll feel great in my bones
By night’s arrival, which would eavesdrop on starlings
If I let it count to zero
Please be kind to strangers
Who hunker down in subplots
Where reckless voices almost blend
But most of us are still not allowed to attend
Somehow, it went unrehearsed
For a minimum introductory pillow— the wind
On fire like one’s eyes, or the next
Great theme that will soon become apparent
Listen, everyone has a voice, a voice that carries what you mean & what you do not think you meant & what you did not think you meant to do but did anyway. A voice that follows in the night. That deflects & is deflected by us/you.
We have ceased to be
Ourselves
We go on being beings
Not selves or wholes
Wholes with holes in them
