{"id":16237,"date":"2020-08-01T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T05:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=16237"},"modified":"2020-07-31T23:50:23","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T04:50:23","slug":"recreate-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/16237","title":{"rendered":"Recreate-Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>For Laida<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Everyone you love<br \/>\nis visiting you. Everyone you love is<br \/>\nwith you in a house<br \/>\nin LA. You tell them Don\u2019t<br \/>\nwater the plants. No one<br \/>\nwill know. I won\u2019t<br \/>\nknow. This isn\u2019t my house.<br \/>\nThe situation is<br \/>\nyou have to tell each<br \/>\none of them you love them. It\u2019s<br \/>\nsimple. You have never<br \/>\nhad to do something<br \/>\nso simple before. By night<br \/>\nthe bed-covers<br \/>\nare covered with lemons<br \/>\nand salt. Everyone you love<br \/>\nis watching <em>Il deserto<br \/>\n<\/em><em>rosso<\/em> in the garden. When<br \/>\nthe film ends the corners<br \/>\nof all our eyes are white-<br \/>\nred-gold from looking<br \/>\naway from you. Every<br \/>\nnight we tell stories where<br \/>\nno one dies except<br \/>\nthe dead, who keep dying<br \/>\nwhen the door shuts. You<br \/>\nretell the same story each<br \/>\ntime, checking<br \/>\nif it\u2019s still extinguishable. Your first<br \/>\nfriend makes a gesture<br \/>\nby your bed like her<br \/>\nmemoir getting colder, harder<br \/>\nto read. The<br \/>\nbed slides. The landscape<br \/>\nfloods the room by adding<br \/>\nthe horizon<br \/>\naway from it. Like<br \/>\npublic baths, cactus-<br \/>\nflowers drenched<br \/>\nin sweat. Like the bookshelf<br \/>\ncrumbling. It\u2019s life<br \/>\nthat we were recreating. It\u2019s life<br \/>\nthat we could live<br \/>\nby fleeing. Everything<br \/>\nwe love<br \/>\nis fleeing with us. Everyone<br \/>\nwe know. I love you,<br \/>\nyou say to your last friend, the one<br \/>\nyou don\u2019t love yet. The candles<br \/>\nare flowing all over the leaves<br \/>\non the desk. You stretch<br \/>\nout your hands, knowing<br \/>\nthere\u2019s nothing<br \/>\nto catch. I wrote<br \/>\nthis poem to you, not so<br \/>\nyou could read it but so that,<br \/>\nsecretly, we could talk about the future<br \/>\nbehind the lines while<br \/>\nsomeone else reads it for us.<br \/>\nEvery line an excuse, one more second<br \/>\nwith you to talk<br \/>\nabout the future, that part of it that<br \/>\ngets buried by language<br \/>\nlike unused light. Not<br \/>\nthe language that speaks but<br \/>\nthe one that turns, the one filled<br \/>\nwith burning<br \/>\nglass jars, the one<br \/>\nthat escapes back, like a camera<br \/>\nin a room-zone it doesn\u2019t<br \/>\nwant us to leave.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/16357\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">YONGYU CHEN<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Laida Everyone you love is visiting you. Everyone you love is with you in a house in LA. You tell them Don\u2019t water the plants. No one will know. I won\u2019t know. This isn\u2019t my house. The situation is you have to tell each one of them you love them. It\u2019s simple. You have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[65],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-4dT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16359,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16237\/revisions\/16359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}