What Occurs to Me This Morning
When I wake up you are raving
about home renovations and Duane Allman
and showing me doubling guitars—
like how sometimes you walk around strumming
the one you built yourself, or play beats
you soon forget but I can sing for months.
My stomach hurts and I’m tired and I wonder,
is this what it’s been like to be with me for eight years?
Years of me pummeling you, I know,
with acting theory and poetics while you try to make a coffee
and just want to be alone like I do this morning,
but I see you now and I understand
the calculation you have made—that it’s better
to see the one you love excited and suffer it
the way we suffer our dog to shoulder against us
while we sit and try to write or work—
like how you say every day you never wanted
a dog, and like how you swear, as you stroke her
to sleep, she only adds misery and nuisance to your life.
The Irreparable (1898), Félix Edouard Vallotton.
Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Five O’Clock (1898), Félix Edouard Vallotton.
Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Harriet Weaver
Publab Fellow 2023
Harriet Weaver is a Los Angeles–based writer with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a BA from Yale University, where she studied with Harold Bloom. In her previous career as an actor and producer, Harriet studied under legendary director Wynn Handman and brought shows to Broadway while working at Blue Spruce Productions. She was also an instructor of poetry and composition at UC Irvine. Harriet has produced short films, and currently focuses on poetry, novels, and half-hour TV comedy. She grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and Wexford, Pennsylvania.
Félix Edouard Vallotton
Artist
Félix Edouard Vallotton (1865-1925) was a Swiss and French artist known for his visual representations of the Parisian bourgeoisie. Influenced by Ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints, Vallotton created a suite of ten woodcuts titled Intimacies that depicted various intimate encounters between lovers.