“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe [Manuscript, 2 p., ca. May 1849]. Clearly sensing that “Annabel Lee” would be his last poem, Poe took the unusual step, after finishing it in May 1849, of writing out several copies, of which this signed copy is one, and circulating them among his friends to ensure that the poem would not go unnoticed. Poe read the poem in lectures in Richmond and sold it, along with “The Bells,” to Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art for publication. However, it was first printed in the New-York Daily Tribune on October 9, 1849, only two days after the poet’s death, rushed into print by Rufus Griswold, who had received a copy for later inclusion in the tenth edition of The Poets and Poetry of America. Although at least four of Poe’s women friends claimed to have inspired “Annabel Lee,” the poet’s real motivation may be a reflection of his continued mourning for his wife, Virginia, who died two years earlier. (via Columbia.edu)
There are so many things I’m not allowed to tell you.
I touch myself, I dream.
Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending
that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands,
these shins, these soapy flanks.
The musicians start the overture while I hide behind the microphone,
trying to match the dubbing
to the big lips shining down from the screen.
We’re filming the movie called Planet of Love—
there’s sex of course, and ballroom dancing,
fancy clothes and waterlilies in the pond, and half the night you’re
a dependable chap, mounting the stairs in lamplight to the bath, but then
the too white teeth all night,
all over the American sky, too much to bear, this constant fingering,
your hands a river gesture, the birds in flight, the birds still singing
outside the greasy window, in the trees.
There’s a part in the movie
where you can see right through the acting,
where you can tell that I’m about to burst into tears,
right before I burst into tears
and flee to the slimy moonlit riverbed
canopied with devastated clouds.
We’re shooting the scene where I swallow your heart and you make me
spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls
right out of my mouth.
You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.
Lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I didn’t want to see it this way,
everything eating everything in the end.
We know how the light works,
we know where the sound is coming from.
Verse. Chorus. Verse.
I’m sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious.
