Evolution

Also by Eileen Myles

Afterglow (a dog memoir)

I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975–2014

Snowflake / different streets

Inferno (a poet’s novel)

The Importance of Being Iceland / travel essays in art

Sorry, Tree

Tow (with drawings by artist Larry R. Collins)

Skies

on my way

Cool for You

School of Fish

Maxfield Parrish / early & new poems

The New Fuck You / adventures in lesbian reading (with Liz Kotz)

Chelsea Girls

Not Me

1969

Bread and Water

Sappho’s Boat

A Fresh Young Voice from the Plains

Polar Ode (with Anne Waldman)

The Irony of the Leash

evolution

eileen myles

Copyright © 2018 by Eileen Myles

Cover photograph © courtesy of the author

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

Text Design by Norman E. Tuttle of Alpha Design & Composition

This book is set in 12 pt. Bembo by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: September 2018

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-8021-2850-8

eISBN 978-0-8021-4636-6

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available for this title.

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

for Adam Fitzgerald

contents

Cover

Also by Eileen Myles

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

[I am Ann Lee …]

Evolution

Noggin

Harp

Car Notebook

Wet Paris

Walter Myles

Each Day I Get Up

We Are Stardust

G’s Body

BP

The City

15 minutes

our happiness

A Gift for You

The Baby

St. Joseph Father of Whales

Dream

Dream 2

for you

After the Season

Sept 18

Washington

To My Flowers

El Diablito

Angel

Sharing Fall

Paradise

Notell

beautiful cows

The City of New York

Paint Me a Penis

Large Large White Flowers

Dissolution

August 23

Photograph of everything

Sylvia

Acceptance Speech

Western Poem

The Earth

Jiggly

May 8

Epic for You

May 26

You

You

Circus

So

Today

Memorial Day

Today Egyptian

After Thought

Lark

A

Aloha

Television

Failed Appointment

Notebook, 1981

Kitchen/Holidays

In the Picture

End War

My Poems

While You Live Here

Poem at Dusk

Dear Adam

A Little Bit

The West

The Vow

creep

Transmission

A hundred per cent

Sweet heart

Acknowledgments

Back Cover

I am Ann Lee. I thought that would be a good place to start. I am Eileen Myles. I am 67 years old. My mother died on April 3rd. She was 96. I have not had sex since January. I am writing to you from Cape Cod. It was a horrible week. It was kind of a stray week. I really wanted to be home in New York and I had just gotten back from three weeks in Palestine, Ukraine and Russia. I resisted the impulse to say the Ukraine. Is that its name. I just wanted to be home after that. I had planned to be in Provincetown in August but there was this available week in June. I thought that’d be nice. Yeah but won’t you be tired. You know that thing where you know something but you speed up over that voice convincing yourself that the logical thing is true. I came up here with a friend and we did a little work together and next morning she got on one of those tiny planes. We thought this is such a Sagittarian trip that she would drive up to the Cape with me & my dog to do a little work and leave the next morning in order to hear a band named red ants spelled red aunts that she really loves and they were after all really great. I began my week of relaxing and working and being in my home state. I began to miss my mom. Around weather. Because it was horrible this week. It like rained all day long and all night long. I didn’t have to go to the beach but you know it was cold too and I was staying in an unheated shack in a part of Provincetown called Tasha Hill which is very rustic which means wet wood and hobbit houses and goats and horses and roaming dogs and chipmunks but like really chilly and the internet wasn’t working and the gas wasn’t on and using the space heater I blew a fuse. It’s a circuit corrected Thomas who I rented the place from. Who cares, it blew, it blew. It rained and rained and I wanted to call my mother in her nursing home in Greenfield and say what do you think of this weather. And she would say it stinks. But I can’t. That’s exactly the way I miss my mother. A deepening of the abyss with a hoot. I miss that. I mean there were many nice moments including one last night when it was already nice again and I was stepping over a wall onto the wooden ladder onto the beach and I thought I’m like Tennessee Williams. I’m like an old queer in the