Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, by Marc Chagall, 1961.
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Ben Lerner and Maryam Hessavi and Fiona Banner and Ernest Hemingway and me and the border

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Fiona Banner gave me a book of poetry not poetry in fact but about it and about in fact the hatred of it by most people by Ben Lerner then I bought four separate books by Ben Lerner only one of them had any poetry in it the others had stories in so there were three story books and one poetry book and I read the story books and thought I liked one or two of them two of them very much actually and I read the poetry and thought I liked it then also I hated it but I didn’t hate Ben Lerner's poetry book for the reasons Ben Lerner wrote about people hating poetry in Ben Lerner's book which is actually called The Hatred of Poetry I hated Ben Lerner's poetry book for being too good in general much later I intern at the Poetry School and Maryam Hessavi works at the Poetry School and Maryam Hessavi of her own free will and choosing the day before armistice day kindly sends me an email with a pdf of a poetry book by Ben Lerner in which all the other books I have read by Ben Lerner are mentioned and a couple I have not read and this is without any prompting or prior knowledge and this book is called The Lights I am reading The Lights now there are lots of Ben Lerners on instagram but none of them are him so it is true that Ben Lerner is not found on instagram and also true that Ben Lerner is very often found on instagram and a review of one of Ben Lerner's story books compared it to an Ernest Hemingway book called Fiesta and I don't know about all that but I had read a few books by Ernest Hemingway but Fiesta was not one of them so I read Fiesta and it had in it a part where they go to Spain to in fact Pamplona from France from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and I knew the border crossing Ernest Hemingway was writing about because I'd been there three times before and had not called myself a poet any of those times but had imagined what it would have been like when the border meant anything and Ernest Hemingway had been there much before me and Ernest Hemingway had written it then into his book Fiesta so it was funny that I knew about the border decades later but still well before I knew Ernest Hemingway knew about it and about Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway because of Ben Lerner and about Ben Lerner because of Fiona Banner and was reminded of all of this by Maryam Hessavi and listen I don't think I hate Ben Lerner's poetry really and not all of it is too good in general and listen borders don't really mean anything and nations neither and I feel like people will eventually grow out of them and this poem is for Fiona Banner and Ben Lerner and Maryam Hessavi and Ernest Hemingway and me and listen this poem is for a world in which borders are a thing we only used to have but all got tired of and this poem is for a world where we are tired of saying we are from countries too and we all like to say that we are in fact stateless

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