Nathaniel Rosenthalis: The Problem of Anxiety
Photo: J Valente
The Problem of Anxiety
Or loneliness, what makes it happen?
Like a slap on the wrist, a rubber band one plucks
to do just that, to remember.
Yet to un-sugarcoat the much
there's of freedom to disappear into
if not myself then a circle around
in which I move: scary like a dump truck
trucking down the street at one AM.
I exist. Not sure how hearing rumblings better
helps me. But yet I know it ever does.
Elm
Husband hunting’s scary.
I want more twisted forms
to show themselves
off, knowledge dark
and twisted, a knottage
ten out of ten
when he and I’ll've gone
through each
other again. Through these forms
the twists we are are.
Ever after, I'll be squirting sanitizer.
My therapist's shocked
when I admit to falling asleep
picturing only silent
cuddling. My future guy and I
can't even chat.
Snail bite in a wood.
I make clear words
are violent. The always axes
I'm ill-equipped with.
His face sort of freezing
like water in the taps.
Not least the lemon rind
I peel into
a trash can. A real companion’s
made of necessary mesh.
A beard against my neck.
I genuflect my make
to always be on the outs
with closure. Pout when I rim.
The hundreds any night
from the burly to the twigs
we have over will be all
with compersure, really not getting mad
when either of us swallows
a new sword.
Nor will I feel the need to re-read
Louise Glück's "Elm"
as I did this morning for a wrong
view of a "writhing, stationary tree"
becoming "torment"
inevitably leading to "no forms but twisted
forms." I will have shuffled off
that martyr’s coil.
Won't always be looking
over my shoulder.
Feel the shame of what gets me
and off.
Against the Oral Tradition
Milton says the stars
make creation apter to receive
my Egyptian musk from Scent Elate
I dabbed on my wrist
this morning to best be a paperweight
on my queen bed for a man
who says he'll come but doesn't
then a man who comes in two shakes
of his heartbeat, a man who
takes his dentures out to service me
and his penis veritably outsized
as a Redwood, so I of course obliged
as well a man who dismisses me
for being too handsome and filthy
divine and meek, too Ashbery and Kerouac
all at once, too of the men
and women committed to my memory
in a reckless catalog
I open my body now to be
in September's still hot afternoon light
not even Homer would say is golden
when it leaps, Homer who'd appreciate my art
as even one blurber said of my last book
named after the writer I mentioned prior
you know the one, Bernadette Mayer
who herself named it after Hesiod
which she only thought to do
after told to by her sister
though this be the written
and that the sung
Homer in his time so skilled to drive the force
that fills a word with warmth
stone with stone
Nathaniel Rosenthalis is the author of three full-length collections, including Works and Days (Broken Sleep Books 2024) and The Leniad (Broken Sleep Books 2023). He teaches poetry at NYU. He is also an actor, with credits including Off-Broadway work and Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, GreenRoom42, and 54 Below. Learn more at www.nathanielrosenthalis.com and follow IG @nrosenthalis