“The First Spark of Delight” © Bill Wolak

 

it’s not easy

This [not] untitled poem is a haunting, frag-
mented composition that reads
like the residue of a conversation half-remembered
or a scene replaying itself in frac-
tured consciousness. Its power lies precisely in its dis-

junctions—the poem feels torn between memory
and transcription, the mechanical and the intimate.
The recurring line, “She turned pale upon hearing this,”
anchors the reader in a repeated moment

                              of revelation, but the meaning of “this” is withheld.

That absence becomes the gravitational center
of the poem: everything else—speech, gesture, syntax—spirals around it.

The refrain “it’s not easy” punctuates the text
like a breath that cannot stabilize. It functions
as both emotional refrain and structural hinge,
suggesting exhaustion, resignation,
                                                          or the limits of articulation.

By repeating this phrase “it’s not easy” in a piece full of bro-
ken syntax and incomple-
te utterance (“chil-/ dren’s daily lives…,”
“iden-/ tifies I?) sore.”), the poet creates a rhy-
thm of collapse—language falters

under the weight of what cannot be said.
“She turned pale upon hearing this,”

The visual fragmentation of words (enjam-
bed syllables, stuttered hy-phens, abrupt line b

reaks) evokes the typographic ghosts of early mo-
dernist experiments—think Mina Loy, e.e. cummings, or the textual
          interruptions
of Beckett’s prose—but it also feels contemporary,
like digital noise or c/o/r/r/u/p*ted transcription.

The interplay of voices (“‘Do you think about it often,’ I said”;
“‘Pour me another,’ said Mina”) situates the poem
in a space between dialogue and disintegration.
                                      “it’s not easy”
There are traces of narrative—perhaps a scene of confession,
drinking, fatigue—but these are desta-
bilized by sudden intrusions of detached language: “We may con-
fidently form some idea of the chil-/ dren’s daily lives…”

This bureaucratic, almost anthropological tone
breaks the emotional immediacy, producing a jarring sh-
ift from the intimate to the clinical. The result is an unsettling
oscillation between the human and the tex-
tual. “She turned pale upon hearing this,”

The poem’s corporeal language—“The muscles
collapse / Something happens to the jaw, the lips”—introdu-
ces a violent tenderness, as though the text its-
elf is c\on\v\u\ls\ing. That image of the mouth
failing, the body deforming speech, be-
comes emblematic of the whole work: expression
                                                               under erasure. The repetition
                                                               of gestures (“I pushed the door open…
                                                               felt inside along the wall…”) suggests
the desperate search
for orientation in darkness,
both literal and linguistic.

Ultimately, this is a poem
about difficulty—the fail-
ure of communication, th
e
exhaustion of re-
petition, a
nd the per
sistence o
f trying a-
n-
yway. Its title (or non-title) and refrain encapsulate it perfectly: it’s not easy.

 

Aryan Kaganof is editor of the South African cultural journal herri.

Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared recently in the 2025 Dirty Show in Detroit, Amorous Art 2025 in Indianapolis, the 2025 Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, the 2020 International Festival of Erotic Arts (Chile), the 2020 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018. He was a featured artist in the book Best of Erotic Art (London, 2022).