Bernadette Mayer > Quotes

“I think I know the trees
Will never love me and we're here as accidentally”
― Bernadette Mayer, Midwinter Day

“I don’t know why we sleep or wake or why one dreams a fast bombastic image and the other memory’s faintest trace which anyway haunts the day, if you look hard through the flawed window glass you can begin to see the lightest rain or snow but it’s not there, now I can see it on the books and on the walls, it’s in my eyes, I shouldn’t even mention it, yet do you see it.”
― Bernadette Mayer

“[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up"

You jerk you didn't call me up
I haven't seen you in so long
You probably have a fucking tan
& besides that instead of making love tonight
You're drinking your parents to the airport
I'm through with you bourgeois boys
All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts
Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch
By a soporific color cable t.v. set
Instead of any arc of love, no wonder
The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night
You can either make love or die at the hands of the Cobra Commander


_________________

To make love, turn to page 121.
To die, turn to page 172.”
― Bernadette Mayer

“there’s two tiny potatoes on my desk.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“i read “the story of english” & the word “gullah” puts me in a fugue state.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“Romance was once a luxury, now it’s hard To abjure this winter, even harder To be so solemn about the weather I think I’ll forget my dream And also all my promises and images There are some things you can only put One way, others a different way each time, It doesn’t matter, I’ll wait around out of habit Considering this a luxury and that a hard stone Loving you as if I were walking sensationally Down the stairs looking fast or else Running up a bill still smiling at the store Without a thought to the consequent past.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“I write my poems with my hands on my breasts smelling the redolent smells of all the lilacs I can get for whatever occasion of appropriate love”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“i wrapped the green tomatoes in newspaper, rolled up the lovage in wet paper towels, mailed peggy’s postcard, didn’t see the bear, emptied the sink, read rebecca solnit,”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“passepartout,”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“I was rolling around in them, demanding things, special ones, strawberry cupcakes, my favorite, I was lying in them at the bakery, forging desires I didnt even have for the sheer joy of demanding, of making demands all night, baking all night, all for me, to lie in, to destroy the half I couldn’t eat.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger

“Even still, we search maps for the location of our work and find the moon on the map of the world.”
― Bernadette Mayer

“My life continues to be idyllic & I follow the tracks of an old man in the snow, every day, and, as far as he goes, I go. He cannot speak, and when we finally meet, he introduces me to his dog by barking.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger

“i have been waiting so long for you to pay me, i wonder if it’s just that i am so unpayable because i am a female. there’s been a lot of talk about this lately, people even losing their jobs because they haven’t paid females, I wonder … forced poverty? is it the same as sex? saw a real butterfly today, not just the white ones. there will be so many lilacs, it looks like.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“At the shop we shopped for derangement, but how can you make a sale to yourself: you can only steal.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger

“clafouti,”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“there’s water in the birdbath & the birds are thirsty, the birds are being feisty, who else is feisty & thirsty? me? maybe.”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens

“once upon a time, every vowel was an ‘e,’ so there! thes wes et the begenneng of teme & nebedy noticed et yet. en fect et wes fen. when peeple ferfet te heve fen they mede these ether vewels, so whet the feck? e dent de et. we ceedl’ve getten by weth jest ‘e’s ceedn’t we? The roblem wes the ‘e’s were blut net green, i felt. er were they green net blee? whech wes et? well we ever knew? who ceres? e’m cenfesed by the blee leghts. they weren’t lettle. theegh. & E wes green. e dednt de et. bet whe ded et? whe mede the letters celers fer ell the synesthetes en the werld? we blend eer senses tegether en eer bebyheed & seme remeens, semtemes ets celers letteres, semetimes shepes & seends, ether temes ether steff. ef yee hed e gerl, yee’d meke the nersery penk. maybe. e dent knew. E es green, net blee. thes es my fenel enswer. ferever green er blee. which es et? cen yee tell? ef e tern the blee leghts en, well e see the blee leghts en elways? e’m sere semebedy’s dene thes beferes”
― Bernadette Mayer, Milkweed Smithereens