By Joey Lew, BK’17
This sestina is a 39 line poem that seeks to create a sense of rhythm and rhyme via a rotation of six repeating end words. The author explores the sense of purposelessness and suspension of normality inherent in transitions.
ORIGINAL
TRANSLATION
I remember the curtains in my house.
They smelled of love —
the kind that starts with a thought
and grows, until you are drinking
it. I don’t have a plan
for my things. I put them in the car.
They say that to love is like driving a car —
no one forgets how. i just forget where my house is,
when the road becomes the only plan;
when to be alone, this is the new love,
I only drink
coffee when I drive. So I have quiet, and no thought.
One time my friend had a thought
about love, when we were in the car
driving to the market. Why don’t I drink
and forget? Why don’t I return home
and sleep and drink and forget? I remember this love
like my curtains. Before they broke I had a plan.
They say that god has a plan.
That my every thought
needs to be about his love
and then I will receive it, it doesn’t matter if I am in a car
and I am pulling away from everything that I need to protect, from my home
and the drinks that mother drinks
when she doesn’t have anyone to drink with. The drinks that father drinks when he doesn’t have a plan
to make me come home.
His words come as one thought
— how could you leave? I bought you your car.
I gave you my love.
I want to know where your love
went. He doesn’t understand that I don’t drink or smoke. That I am not lost in this car.
I drive with a specific plan.
I drive to forget the thought
that says that I don’t have a home. I drive from home
because in transit there isn’t a reality. This was the plan.
To separate from space. From time. This was the plan and the one thought
when I left in search of something new. I didn’t think about what makes a place a home.
