Tanya Brolaski
2 Poems
from Madame Bovary’s Diary

Madame neglected her pace without even a trace—in the midst of tribulations the whore
arrived with her diadems.  I stood before the rage and raged that you betray me thus.  Both
the fig tree and the fig—imbue me with no small joy and yet—and yet—distant tongues
betray my shame, the Vicomte is no fool.  Opining on the belle plains, where nature
makes me to forget my conscience, I ask Emma to get gone.  She had the vague idea she’d
like to see the Pacific ocean, perhaps drown in it.



from Madame Bovary’s Diary

Time goes by every once I am blue.  Emma, emma’s leaves.  Tomorrow the body, the
new Proust.  Sappho’s enormous foot.  What is this ceremony of leaves?  Laura, Stella,
whoever.  Who frigged my head and trumped it with desire?  Emma heaves in the gust,
the eighth type of ambiguity.  When the music and the booze go by we tear our hair.  My
cloud, I am anywhere out of this city.  And you still in your widow’s weeds.

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