Barry Schwabsky
Our contact with the world is as direct in vague thought as it is in any thought.
—Timothy Williamson
Accumulated delicacies
and laid at every table
emergency numbers, phenylethylamine
or whatever brings a fingertip into focus
fuzz like a ghost
you’re maybe looking for
the last face abandoned
to create nothing out of something
we only dance and moan.
Barry Schwabsky is an American poet and art critic living in London, he writes regularly for Artforum and The Nation, among others. His new collection of poems, Book Left Open in the Rain, is just barely out from Black Square Editions, New York.