Two Poems

 
 

Judith Goldman and Lisa Jarnot

 

One

 

And where did the Dutch get their vocabulary?
A “generation and transition” company make the
water muddy. Transitional generation in company
of a muddy mere formality: or was it going Dutch,
in transmission to transition? A mere formality of Dutch,
a merely formal vocabulary, to be used “in company”
of Dutch transmissions. My mission was to dutch
a trans-generation, to formulate transitions.
Or was it going muddy in the company?
I threw mud at mimesis, a mere Dutch formality.
And where did the Dutch get their vocabulary?
Formerly, the Dutch kept company without vocabulary.
My former mission was a mere formality,
but I doubled my Dutch on the company’s transmission.

 

Two

 

Primitive haze or composite rejection?
Such training requires persistence–
a fateful hour, a stupid wheel, praiseworthy
annals–the main term “reaction” would be
retained, though searching for innocuous
phenomena. It was not enough to have
a patternbook, a dictatorship, or to claw walls
looking for paint. Returning to the decoding end:
you make it more cryptic. I’ll pant effectively.
Roughly, in the rough, we are roughing it.
This happens when I forget to differentiate–
a false proposition of the first order.
Or say: “When you hate maps, you hate the future.”
Our lines are at stake in the border.