Bernadette Mayer Review Poem by Jessie Branch

A review poem inspired by Bernadette Mayer and her reading of "Story" at St. Marks Church, May 6, 2015.

Sweet lovers say goodbye and I watch them leave

one by one;

14 stories is 13 stories too many

but we love her--

One by one the people say goodbye--

they exit quietly with haste

they chalk it up to other engagements

and can't stop fidgeting--

They can't stop fidgeting because

their legs and feet are falling asleep,

they dream of sleep,

in the same way that she dreams of

laughter--

She lost her train of thought in the same

way that he lost his ability to stop

drumming softly on his thighs--

--is this some kind of inside joke

that I don't understand?--

How many of her stories do I not understand?

Suddenly I get it, it is existence, this poem,

it is about the beginning and its nothingness,

how much there is in the middle,

and how at the end there is so little again; Maybe

all of the stories will end, maybe in the end

there will be one story

that finishes it all, one story that tells it all or Nothing,

maybe Nothing will matter,

none of these stories and none

of the beginnings or ends because in the end

there is Nothing--

Nothing has to do with anything;

my beginning, myself, there was Nothing

except all of the stories I entered into--

Nothing, and, in one, the other.