Heliopause (3 page)

I'll do it again

   three or four

or eight times

Stand up!

Good and straight like a tree

good and stiff like

the rain-darkened gravestone

perpendicular

  to the quiet

Or sit down

and make a nice lap

nod Incredulity off into sleep

Enumerate to her the lines

of the song you haven't meant yet

Hatch

In every place

you seem to end

I have loved you

There was that small

and dead and pink

bird we saw

near the sidewalk

with its smashed

open mouth

a place to let

the world in

a way of not ending

I loved you so

I had to crawl inside

Such and Such a Time at Such and Such a Palace

The lack of a single-word infinitive

in our language is what is killing me

this morning

A single word for all

infinitives is what God is doing tonight

This is just one of many acts

to have passed through the garden

Previously on this show they put

a peacock back together wrong

after its demise

    Something

there was in the syntax

Poor bird could feel it in his bones

Me and My Head as Pieces of Wood

Please accept my uselessness

as a token of other letters

abacus

spells an occasional

way to be feeling

There are limits

     These are

my limitations

I spin around I can't

slide back to then

Flowers Are Also Letters

Imagine eating

in one bite

a rose

  or

imagine eating

gold

 
manger de l'or

Do I?

  Do I ever!

O
e
!

O
i
!

O
eieio
!

Nature Poem

Yesterday it was marsh marigolds

by the river with my mother

and in the afternoon forsythia

with Chris

          (he dislikes it)

and today it is grass again

with ants departing

          or heading

toward each other to exchange

an urgent message

         Church bells

are literally ringing and then

oh my god the train

           and jesus christ a butterfly

lovely brown with off-white tips

and every now and then irregular

lavender spots

   It's not necessary

to write everything down

When a creature quietly tends

to itself

     I am happy

and by extension earlier I thought

for actually a very long time

about ants and the impossibility

of ant masturbation

They do not love themselves enough

They only love each other

They Are Leaving You a Message

▪
for Arda Collins

What they are trying to tell you

is you are wearing the wrong bra

for your shape and situation

This might not even be your life

and in the midst of my thinking

to tell you this a fruit fly

has begun to trail me through the house

as if I were its mother or as if

it were the other way around

and it always is and the house

is on fire at some point

in the simultaneity and I am leaving it

to buy all the things I do

and do not devour

Drapes

They were erecting a conversation

in the middle of the inconsequential

afternoon

        like one of those unnatural flowers

you drop into water and watch

immediately blossom

             And then then what

Has anything changed?

They were emigrating from one wall

to the other

           like swans of

ungodly proportions

            They were not so much

humans as blood drenched with hair

Uncloudy

Sitting in the tower munching clover

with no roof

with encircled sky

a dark hole the quick stars infest

I need these stones to quiet me down

I need the quiet so nouns can collect

The clover's a pulp

         as if I'm making paper

lifting up linen strips from who else

but the dead

             And never has this star clutch

been so silent

  Forever have I darkly thee undressed

Not Much More Room in the Cemetery

I will lie down on top of the graves

It will never feel okay and that is the point

People beneath and people behind me

with their faces and their little horns

and the places from which they are shining

I know there is something else

that they have tried to teach me

and I am sorry for all of the times

I have listened and not learned it

No I am not crying

I'm maybe   um   a demon

For certain I am waving this fruit fly away

As If No Light Could Warm You

A person in

a nice dress

She moves

into the shape

the sun makes

on the floor

A nice dress

& it clamors

A voice says

I can take it

She says
I

take it back

How Long Is the Heliopause

 

 

They say before you know you want

to move your hand

          your hand

is already about to move

They say in advance

            these things

are decided

 

The box of cereal says
We're so happy

our paths have crossed

               but I do not think

I am on one

            I think I am in

a pathless field

 

The wind sends seeds abroad

                          The most careful engineering

Still these contrary gardens grow

 

They say it is hard to believe

that when robots are taking pictures

of Titan's orange ethane lakes

poets still insist on writing about their divorces

This is a poem for my husband

on the occasion of
Voyager

                      perhaps having left our solar system

perhaps about to leave it very soon

                                   They cannot say

The message takes so long to drift to reach us

 

When the self-driving car wants to move

it will first say so

       
changing lanes

                               
changing lanes

                                                        
changing lanes

It hesitates it does not know it is lost

or it has decided on always changing

 

I've heard the cat who may be alive

or may be dead should expect

to live forever

  progressively growing

sicker and sicker

 

This is for my husband

whom I expect to come home

some time between now and the future

 

Let me date this very clearly

This is the year after the year

when people with cable began

to pile Christmas lights into glass jars

the year of evidence of chemical warfare

clear or uncertain

       depending on where you live

 

One beast lives one grows sicker and sicker

One dies one yowls at the door

 

Two days from now I will either

bleed or not bleed

        I will remember

that four years ago we wed and asked

for Divine Assistance

             though we neither of us

pray to any god

 

This is for him on the occasion

of the Olympian's indictment

They say he shot

the one he loved

     Shot the one

who through a door

           he could not see

 

None of this has been right

but maybe a tiny electrical god

has cut and spliced us together

And in this moment yes and in this moment no

and in this moment all the lights

go off at once and it is a bomb

or it is a daughter

 

And this great sound replaces the others

so I can hear nothing but the brightness

of the field

           where I am waiting for the warm chest

of my husband

   for its occasion

and if they say a word now

it would take years for me to know

 

 

Some Glamorous Country

In the war's geometry

among the many givens

the spaces of the torn

away limbs articulate

what

What are they

needed to prove

On the sidewalk

I'm watching a full-length

animation the trees made

w/technical direction

from the sun

We saw
Batman
at

a matinee because who

would bother to shoot

so few so early in the day

It is not that my life

has become interesting

to me

 It is that

given the terrified world

how can I

         & can I resist

the things I have done

in my name

In the Dumps

Just because we've broken my head

doesn't mean we must glue it together

There's other work to be done

                           and dark

grass freezing

  There is some old light

to read by and large pink thumbs

And with my head apart

                  I think

the world can get in easy

                   This

pound of dirt I'm holding weighs a ton

Pursuits

It is not that you want

to be the one to make prints

in the untrampled snow

It is that you want

to be in the snow

without having touched it

to be of the snow

not beginning

Everywhere commerce

dictates the shapes

that move you along

that seat you at a table

far from the snow

far from the act

of not touching

It only gets worse

A girl's gotta eat

And your hunger's

not even your own

Aesthetics of Crying

You meet someone and later you meet

their dancing

  and you have to start again

You like cat one

       and you like cat two

and they do terrible things to each other

Once to celebrate a bad mood

we broke all the clean dishes

There are pictures

        I'd like a portrait

of an angry horse with his beauty

and his fuming

   It's hard to know

what you look like when you're mad

Crying's easier

   I have cried at times

for so long that I have moved the activity

in front of the mirror

            out of curiosity

The information I gathered there remains

thus far unused

    but let the record show

my horrible face

Keep in Shape

I only think the snow regards me

It falls where I stand

            and that's all

It doesn't stay in place when I

walk on

      They say Jesus wrote

a little in some dirt that

blew away

          They say a man

can piss a short name

in the snow

            Nice work

See me after class

        See how

the weather does not write me

never phones

I can't pretend

that doesn't hurt

      but I can

pretend I'm burning down my home

Optioned

Of my days I'm director

not author

         and neither of us has

any money

I was born with a wooden spoon

in my ass

         Imagine my embarrassment!

Then go ahead and imagine your own

What does a house do?

                That's easy

It houses

       just as a cloud

pulls the light from a face

when someone utters
mortgage

In any other world

        a sweet name

for a daughter

 beginning as it does

with a little death

Annual

The sky lifted from black into paleness

while gloom rocked the markets

gently

  a terrifying dad

I had intended to have flowers

delivered

        It was a condition

I'd suffered before

On the back road

you remarked upon the width

of the stone wall and everyone nodded

walked slowly away

Our lives are I think

coming apart

 There were clouds

we could see but not say

Ecumene

We are where we are bound for