I had an accident but lived in elegance
on methamphetamines and small stacks
of Black Beauty paperbacks

I would like this poem
to be a machine.
Concise, metallic,
a counting apparatus.
A means to keep each moment
contained and fixed, akin
to a series of Polaroids,
photographed and fixed
to cardboard or some other
paper-panel backing.

Photographs of photographs and Polaroids
of stacks of books on fragments
and photographs and pamphlets
on letters sent and imminent
collisions. What the body does not know
it wants. And the mind.

A California of snow and the surprise
Of illness. I throned myself in the white
Noise of its silence and watched as the world

In an excerpt from Cynthia Cruz’s new book, ‘The Melancholia of Class,’ the author considers the class consciousness of Clarice Lispector’s fiction.

Cynthia Cruz reads a poem by Lawrence Joseph, reminding us of the bravery of seeing the world as it is, in all its mystery.