David Norian: Spaces

Silence for just more than a second.
Then a sound from there.
But more from the left there.
Oh, yes
these are cars.
Then more sound from both sides.

I once sat here all night.
Enjoying
really respecting the quiet.

Count—
wait count.
1, 2.
The spaces between cars.
1.
They are there.
1, 2, 3!

David Norian: Sipping

At parts when the rhythm can match
the paced sipping of nothing or very little.
It can be—
is learned in theatres.

With soda with soda
Sipping soda to the movie.

David Norian: At Dinner

When it comes to another meal
So frequently
I’ve been alone.
Slice shop or Tin’s House
and I’ll go in late.

Still there’s a certain allure to it all
and as the food heats he sweeps.
“I’ll surely be the last.”

David Norian: An Easy Life

Thoughts about how long my heart
and all those other parts
will work/play
are easily put aside
for eating
and clinchers like the fact that I have no control
and that it’s really not my decision.

David Norian: Device

There must be a million people out there
more than that.
So make it worthwhile.
Use it well.

I had that machine “device”
for the same reason as you.
Same as everybody.
But I’m not in that business anymore
no way.

Yes it’s all there and more, I’m repeating.
It’s just a little more.
It takes a little more than what I had.

And I’m repeating.

I had energy.
Everybody doin’ it with that energy.




David Norian is a writer based in the New York area. He graduated from the University of California, where he studied with Thom Gunn and Gary Soto, and later under Agha Shahid Ali. Of his poems, Gunn said "[Norian] deals with the succinct, the observation that stops early, perhaps even at times with the unsaid. His work is all his own invention.”

David Norian: The Listening

I was in the day late
got into it late.
But at my time sitting
the opera came.
I on the john hearing opera
from next door
for the first time.

Perhaps in his chair lights off
maybe wearing a blue shirt.
But really, out the window
the paint on their house told me very little of them.
As did the minor way their house met the street.