I want you to feel safe. I want you to feel loved. I want you to be safe. I want you to be loved.
Good morning, cold air. Good morning, trucks zipping along the highway. Good morning, basalt boulders. Good morning, wildlands.
Winter sky heavy with ravens.
Because the truth is not where we left it.
Because we seek the truth, need the truth, feed the truth.
And truth is water. And we are the drought without truth. No doubt.
Because we lead in truth.
I need a break from being conscious. I can’t wait until I’m under anesthesia tomorrow.
Once you think you’re dying, everything seems like a sign that you’re dying.
Same old story: finding land, encountering people.
One place that is two: (t)here.
I serve poetry. I serve weaving. I serve music. There is no other way, no other choice. I serve Earth. I serve living beings. I serve love. There is no other way, no other choice.
I invented a new word based on my activities last night: diavomirrhea. Since you might need the term someday, you’re welcome.
Don’t quiet quit your life.
When I first learned about filibustering in my civics class, I intuitively understood that I’d be great at it.
I can totally write a single sentence and stop there. But why?
I spent part of the afternoon with a downy woodpecker.
I had a dream about two secret words. I held their names on my lips when I woke, but a waking word entered my mouth and I lost the secret words. They meant, During wars, the only ones left in this small town are the unemployed, and they sounded a little bit like okey-dokey.
There is a seam in the sky where a backgrounded opacity meets a foregrounded opacity. We have been painted in.
The female cardinal is neon in this light.
I caught my dream words this morning before they leapt from my tongue: I am hunting words through an increasingly gentle forest that opens onto a faceless marsh of mallow. Stop, please. Language, stop me. Stop until words make me hungry again. Then I’ll eat them like durian, treaded skins and all.
Every day I live with this illness is a day for me to take stock. That is how my illness is the gift I never fathomed it could be.
This season, I have a favorite chipmunk. I should love them all equally, but only one is my darling.
My words from three dreams ago swam back to me last night, the ones I lost on waking but that reminded me of okey-dokey. The words are “ini k’ani.” I looked them up, and both are Asomtavruli letters used to write in the Georgian language. Ini is the equivalent of an English short “i,” as in “hit.” K’ani is the equivalent of an English “k,” but glottalized. Who knows why I would dream these sounds at all, let alone on two different nights.
Musical instruments have humble bodies, yet their voices are bold.
When did the poetry community become a bare knuckle boxing ring?
Visions are what happens when the mind is ever so slightly batted away from its cultural trappings, when certain centers flash that are typically dull and systematically made duller by the very culture that produces and sustains it. But the visions are still steeped in the culture in which the mind lives. They are not free from it, though traces of free thought can be made out, like the echo of a long overgrown trail within dense forest. As a friend says, visions are “trances and traces.”
Tra(n)ces.
Living and dying are not two things. They are one thing. They sit side by side, as intimate as young lovers.
Moments after the samara wheels to earth, it stands upright, like a ballerina doing a revelé, poised to tunnel the soil with its gaunt root.
Death is kneeing life in the groin today.
Sentences make words feel like they have friends.
My darling chipmunk is staring into a puddle as if it were a reflecting pool.
Some people spend their whole lives polishing a lump of coal, convinced they’ve gotten hold of a diamond.
The whole point of living in Kansas is to be lost in the world and to lose the world.
There is definitely more to life than poetry acceptances. For instance, there’s poetry.
Sometimes there’s not much bridge left to burn. Better to let the elements deal with what remains.
When you continue to speak despite the fact that nobody is listening, you must be saying something that is either of no importance or of grave importance.
I am not the world’s ornamentation.
Maxine Kumin says Anne Sexton lived a year longer than she would have otherwise because a priest told her something that kept her going: God is in your typewriter.
The first bird of spring has emerged, but it does not sing. It screams.
I have work to do. I can’t be bothered by small fish who want to rub against my ankles to irritate me or to pleasure themselves.
The buds on the trees are a form of pointillism.
I think I’ll change my first name to an open parenthesis and my last name to a closed parenthesis. My middle name will be empty space.
My body is like a barn left to the field.
If I were an animal, I would crawl off to die on days when my body feels like this. Then I would start to feel better and come crawling toward you. I would be the one with detritus hitching a ride on my flanks. Everything wants to make its way back to the living, even rubble and scraps.
I filled Easter eggs with lines from my favorite poems and hid them at my alma mater with the help of a dear friend. I did this because poetry is action and poetry is love.
My knees were hung with tin triangular medals / to cure all forms of hysterical disease. — Carolyn Kizer
[1997. Kansas City. Figlio Italian Restaurant, Small group dinner for an iconic poet before her poetry reading. I am in attendance.]
The poet sits down at the table. She puts on her earrings. Clip-ons. She explains that they fall off. She removes them every time she goes outside so she won’t lose them. She tells her dinner companions that the earrings are expensive, not like the turquoise found in Mexico. These earrings are better, she says, because they are from Europe. The food comes. The poet complains that her companions aren’t eating enough. She insists everyone have some of her fish, cutting off a large piece for the person sitting to her left. She puts it on his plate. He eats it. She passes her squid around the table, too, for all to pick at. She orders a bottle of wine. She drinks several glasses and tells her companions about the time another iconic poet tried to rape her. She laughs as she tells the story. It’s the second time today she’s told it. The table orders more wine.
We are told that the birds with the faces of women are horribly foul and loathsome. They steal food and they smell. I am half partridge. You can tell by my graying legs and thick skin. I go by the name Stormswift. I go by the name Swiftwing. I have no name.
The internal structure of the bird is elegant. Crop. Proventriculus. Gizzard. Pancreas. Intestine. Ceca. Cloaca. Vent. These organs hang like baubles from a charm bracelet.
I used to think internal organs were ugly. Now I think they’re the most beautiful thing we never see.
When there is no movement, there is only a series of incidents that temporarily interrupts the system like electroconvulsive shocks to the brain. When there is a movement, someone else decides what it will be and won’t, who will be part of it and who won’t. The movement becomes a system whose structure mirrors that of the larger system it is attempting to reform or overthrow. The movement is the pill swallowed to counteract the effects of another pill.
What is individual consciousness when the oppressor is inside everyone else’s mind?
When I envision it, I see him handling my body as if it were a corpse. I am floating above, looking down on the ruin.
When encountered in society, Nietzsche says, intelligent women lose their intellectual amiability and throw a harsh light on themselves, their tactics, and their objective of a public victory. The same women “become female again” and “rediscover their intellectual charm” in a dialogue for two. Charm is a bauble easily broken from the chain. Charm is the cheap way into discourse, nothing more than a token from a strip mall jewelry store.
It was as if I had been cloned, but one of me was all body and the other was no body. The part of me that was body could not move my body. The part of me that was no body had no body with which to move.
My body is not ready to emerge. Where others see rain, I see snow. Where others see spring, I see winter. Let me sleep a moment longer in the arms of Hades, my keeper.
I long to be as clear as the urine of a well-hydrated man.
I am in the field. Do not talk to me about the neighboring highway.
When did I misplace myself, what year? Where is my garland of intestines? My skin sack? Who is using my brain as a doorstop?
If my life were a video game, then I would have just leveled up from the pajamas level to the nearly presentable leisurewear level.
Look up. Today’s clouds are the sky’s continents.
Dizziness. Exhaustion. Problems with word recall. General brain fog. This is what I get for leaving the house.
I love my body in the long shadows of evening light.
God and Satan both appeared in my dreams last night. God was being aloof, and Satan was pretending to be God.
God is a slight wind through a cracked door.
Mannose-binding lectin deficiency impairs the body’s ability to utilize the immunoglobulins it creates, as well as those imported through infusions. That’s because mannose-binding lectin is what both earmarks and breaks through the hard casing of bacterial, fungal, viral, and protozoan pathogens. You can bring in all the fighters you want, but if you can’t penetrate the source of the problem, those fighters will be reduced to witnesses. Or worse, they will wander, aimless, unaware that the pathogen is even present.
The bird flew through me and emerged as a clot of blood.
There are no shades of gray because gray is a tone, not a shade.
My medical conditions are not a death sentence. They’re a life sentence.
Today, I stooped to a new low. I used a Facebook sticker as a weapon. Do not follow me into that darkness.
Contrary to popular belief, Roman vomitoriums were not places designated for vomiting. They were a means for quick escape. Large crowds could pass through the amphitheater’s vomitorium and into open space.
There’s always something dead crowding something living, like the mouse lying motionless beside two owlets. Like the clapper rail beside the mouse. Like the squirrel beside the clapper rail.
The more I want to speak, the more my mouth burns.
“At least he didn’t rape me.” That is the kind of logic many survivors of rape and child sexual abuse employ when someone revictimizes them in ways that fall short of outright rape. “At least he only did x and not y” is our way of creating a sense of empowerment and protection in the moment and not allowing the person who has hurt us to strip us of who we are. We feel that as long as it could have been worse, we can still move forward. We can become whole again, or at least we can live with the hope of becoming whole.
I am committed to the fight, not to the spats.
A poet I’ve known for years said her abuse is buried so deep she can’t imagine touching it. I don’t want to live like that, with a splinter that’s made its way to my heart. My voice keeps the splinter from going deeper.
This is not the time for easy conversations.
Conversation is the only route to understanding and even then, who knows.
Before language, my body was a verb.
Maybe a poet friends us on Facebook because they want to market their latest collection, or because their friend’s friend friended us. We might not even be acquainted with anyone beyond that first-level friend, the rest being nothing more than piggy-backed apparent connections which spread out and out from that one person. In this case, a true network is not forming. Instead we are seeing a proliferation of non-networks—collections of strangers that have the appearance of connectivity. And those strangers now have unprecedented access to us. We are no longer invisible to them, either.
I have eighty-four friends on Facebook. I have known sixty-eight of them for years or even decades. Twenty-five of them are kindred spirits. Sixteen of them are among my closest friends. I have school and work ties to twelve of them. I have the same rare disease as six of them. I will love seven of them until the day I die, and I am unwavering in my commitment to them. I have connections with each of them that extend well beyond Facebook: We are bound by shared experience and shared purpose. I know who they are. I trust them. They are neither strangers nor strangers who appear to be friends.
Theorists such as Robin Dunbar posit that our brains don’t allow us to manage more than about one hundred fifty close or relatively close relationships. We just don’t have the ability, even with established and emerging technologies, to increase the mental and emotional requirements to closely follow, and to emotionally and intellectually engage with, more than one hundred to one hundred fifty other people.
Only I can see my list of friends on Facebook. Many people make that list public, but I won’t. I don’t want to give anyone using Facebook—even someone I don’t know at all—the ability to peruse my friends list, message or send friend requests to my friends based on their connection with me, or otherwise create the impression of being something other than they are, which is a stranger.
What happens when we have more than one hundred fifty close or relatively close relationships, even on social media? Robin Dunbar says we can neither closely follow nor emotionally and intellectually engage with our connections. I argue that something else—something more important—happens as well, which is that we give rise to virtual communities which are unsafe, ones in which the bloated network’s intrinsic dysregulation leads to infractions that take on many forms, including denigration, harassment, manipulation, coercion, assault, and even rape. All the while, those who commit the infractions walk among us, glad-handing the network’s other participants, both buttressed and seemingly protected by his or her connection with those members. The perpetrator’s continued acceptance by the network seems, in itself, like a vote of confidence in the perpetrator and also a motion of no confidence against the victim. Who wants to stand up against someone so many seem to stand with? For half a decade, I did not stand up. Even now, I am not standing. Though I am no longer crouching, I’ve only half-risen. If you can’t see me, look down: I’m the one on my knees.
Just as you’ve destroyed your life, here in this / small corner, so you’ve wasted it through all the world. — C. P. Cavafy
Just as your life has been destroyed, here in this / small corner, so it has been wasted through all the world. — M Ross Henry
I am at risk of becoming the apath, the element within a broken system that enables the system to continue by tacitly accepting and supporting the role and work of the sociopath. Though I was a victim several years ago, I alone am responsible for the ongoing, relentless process of compromising myself in order to carve out a role in the system. To continue on the same path would have required becoming the very element that is essential for feeding the system’s engine, as the sociopath cannot do his or her work without a throng of apaths to actively support and further that work (or to passively look away as that work is being done). I will not victimize others indirectly. I will not shave myself off in pieces, leave gaping silences out of fear, or turn a blind eye to the truth.
I want to be as spare as an empty table, to be white and plastic and to cast off light as if it’s nothing.
Antibodies are one component of the immune system that is designed to identify and destroy pathogens, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, the pathogens are not recognized as a threat. Sometimes the self is seen as the threat and attacked instead of the pathogens. Sometimes the threat is known, identified, but the antibodies cannot work together or with other parts of the immune system in order to overcome that threat. These are the lessons my body as taught me, that the disease process within me mirrors the disease process in our external systems, the systems created and advanced by mankind.
I am the apath. Spend a day as the apath and you are the apath. Spend a moment as the apath and you are the apath. A decade. A lifetime. A year.
I’ve always seen the dust on surfaces.
In the literary community, the commitment should not be to safer and more inclusive spaces. It should be to safe and inclusive spaces.
Pardon me while I cough up this wandering womb.
A dry rice cake is stuck inside my dry throat. My body imitates the dry cask model of waste disposal.
Browsing the dictionary: closet, cloven, corset, cove, cover. Do you know how many words are a variation on cover? A fungus called covered smut enters through the seed and affects the plant systemically. Passed during copulation, covering disease leads to paralysis and death in horses. The outer garment worn to conceal untidy clothes is called a coverslut, which in itself is another form of cover known as a cover-up. Cover up, coverslut, before you are covered in smut. Will you ever recover from this covering disease? Will you waste away with ease, with ease?
I think the abuser becomes part of the abused more than the abused becomes part of the abuser. With the former, there is a form of chimerism in play. With the latter? I have no idea what is in play. I can’t enter the mind or body of the abuser, other than through my role as the abused.
He appears in paintings. Once, I saw him slumped over the red wool gathered under the arms of Saint John the Baptist. He was just another animal in the wilderness that rises from the dark and returns to the dark. His skin did not cast off light.
Music interspersed with static. A static that brambles the mind. I am tired of being on hold.
The music, the static, a form of reprogramming. A piano, faint, in the background. It’s easy to play only the white keys.
The music sounds like it’s coming through water. Like a dream of the Titanic.
Finally an answer, then a transfer to the wrong line. More music. More static.
The music is the song of the abuser, dancing underwater, his suit clinging to his body like kelp.
And coral is a dead dress that tears the skin.
This hold music. Please hold. Just hold. Hold on. Hold me.
Now the word hold is foreign. The music behind the static has shifted to something more hopeful. The music is walking onto the shore, shaking off its water.
Trying to make a phone call to the South is like trying to call another era. Where is the telegraph when I need it?
And when they finally answer, their speech is heavy and slow, as if they’ve been up all night drinking. How can such an outdated processor function in today’s age of quick thought and quicker response times?
I spread molasses on my tongue to match their speech, using my long-suppressed Oklahoma drawl to my advantage. I lace my sentences with phrases they might like. I say “bless your heart” and find myself meaning it.
The indoctrination is working. The static begins to sing.
I ask them to show me the water. They take me to the cove. They ask to be alone with me. The water is static.
I ask them to show me the field. They take me to thick brush.
Their thoughts open like magnolia blossoms.
We talk of Tennessee, its sibilance, the snakes suffocating its midsection.
Tennessee is a single closet where I hid from the man who was made of hands.
We do not talk of Carolina. Sweet Carolina. The South and I will get to that in time. First, I must remove the thorns and bring up the salt I have swallowed.
They ask if I was the first. The first what, I reply. The first to swallow the water, or the first to purge it?
They ask for the name of the person I’ve called to speak with, not knowing the name has already been uttered beneath static. It is in the cove, in the thick brush. I arrange burs into small groups. I label each group: the ones that pricked; the ones that drew blood; the ones that tangled my hair.
A dream of partridges flies through the moment. I tell them the name is Daedalus, master craftsman. I wait for Icarus to fall.
Avoid the cove. Avoid the thick brush. I am being as clear as I can be. I am speaking with partridges in my mouth.
A Greek crime mars the pastoral.
Now he has a name, but is it Daedalus or Icarus?
I am wearing the dress of dead coral. I have a funeral to attend.
I ply the needle until I am stitched into this garment. I am the fixed place, the fixed time, the in-and-out motion of metal. I am the point and the empty head. I will wear my brittle gown to the ball.
—
The line “A Greek crime mars the pastoral” is from Wunderkammer, by Cynthia Cruz.
The last section is in response to Friedrich Nietzsche’s observation that “Women … speak like creatures who have for millennia sat at the loom, or plied the needle, or been childish with children.”
I have all these memories, but I don’t know if they are of the life I had or the life I wanted.
I’m so nice to people these days, they have trouble understanding why they don’t like me.
We feed words to the air, not to each other.
The dangerous poem is the one that maims, not the one that describes the maiming.
The people who tell you to forgive and forget? They’re the ones who stand to benefit from your doing so.
Too many people are writing about boring things.
No power without sociopathy.
Show me the figurative language in the office memo and I’ll show you the employee who’s shown the door for wasting that much time crafting an office memo.
The book of faces. The book of names. The book of facades. The book of shames. The book of fables. The book of famines. The book of sames. The book of lames. The book of dames. The book of games. The book of games. The book of games.
I am done saying too little. I’ve said too little for too long. I’ll probably say too much until I figure out how to not say too little without saying too much. (Even that sentence was too much about too little. Are you taking notes on my nothings?) Bear with me or don’t. (Don’t bare with me. I know that’s how it sounded, but it’s not what I wrote. I’m the one who feels naked and vulnerable in this status message, not you, so grin a bear it, even if barely.)
Don’t say I got this way on my own. I’ll give you the names of my makers. They’re all right here in this book of the face. This book of the farce. This scrolling book of names a Rolodex of shames. They are never far, never far, until they share space with grubs, like the first man who made me, not Adam but his descendant. He was bright as the sun. That’s why they called him Ray. Now I’ve named. Now I’ve named. Now I’ve named the first name.
The cardinal is a single drop of blood on the birch tree’s white arm.
A long day in a short life.
Don’t ask me what my problem is because you’ll be in for a long answer.
I woke up screaming these words in my head: “Why the FURNITURE am I awake right now!” Only the word furniture wasn’t really furniture. That’s just what my phone suggested I type instead of xxxx.
Another night’s sleep, another opportunity to further define these boob wrinkles.
Hey, when did I put on this turtleneck? Oh, that’s just my actual neck.
How am I? I’m wearing a broom skirt as a sundress. That’s how I am.
That’s it. If my underwear doesn’t fit right, I’m throwing it out. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
I must be feeling a little better because my pissed off is back.
Every time I look at potatoes, I think “Taters gonna state.”
Between now and later, there is nothing but time.
I’ve discovered a private, out-of-the-way place to discuss my greatest hopes and deepest fears. It’s called the internet.
Someone on a Christian radio station just said that God will “supply” me with all my needs. That’s right. Because God is just like Walmart.
I am having trouble operating heavy machinery right now. By heavy machinery, I mean my cell phone.
Last night’s infusion mostly went into the skin surrounding my elbow. Now I have an elbow boobie. For five bucks, I’ll let you fondle my elbow boobie.
I want to stock every closet, cabinet, and cubby in our home with sex toys, then hold an open house. It’s the only way to get someone to buy this place.
I’m walking backwards in an effort to make time go in reverse.
I feel like that ride at the carnival that’s about to break. You know the one.
My hairdresser asked me if I “tucked,” and I said, “No, my penis is invisible.” What she actually wanted to know was whether I tuck my hair behind my ears.
You know you’re having a bad day when you get mad at your chihuahua for not putting her toys away.
In the spirit of us all being one, whenever you accomplish something great, I’m going to put it on my resume.
I just checked the Dalai Lama’s Facebook feed to see if it’s anything like mine. It’s not.
Today when I wasn’t wearing any clothing, my husband grabbed me—not for sex but to do a quick all-over mole check. Thanks for keeping me safe, honey. Safe and chaste.
I think my mother was ultimately a good person who, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, watered the wrong seeds during her lifetime. To be more accurate, she doused those seeds in alcohol.
I’m pretty sure Hayden thinks my flute is a squeaky toy for humans.
I should go to the bookstore with several copies of one of my poems, paste a copy inside all the poetry journals that are available (Poetry, Boulevard, Tin House, and so forth), then list those publications in my bio as places my work has appeared. Because it would be true.
If we keep calling windchills negative, we’re going to give them a complex.
I feel like the whispering prairie is talking about me behind my back. Grass can be such a gossip. It never learned how to hold its tongue.
If she wants her photo taken, then by all means shoot the messenger.
Tonight I tried to draw a phallus, but it ended up looking like a femur. Long time, no see.
I keep reading “wind-powered organism” as “wind-powered orgasm.”
I just misread the news headline “Unique Lodging Options” as “Unique Longdong Options.”
More and more, professional attire feels like some sort of costume.
On my way home from a meeting tonight, a nice man on the street kept waving and waving at me. It was so sweet. Something must have been wrong with his hand, though, because all he could wave was his middle finger. Poor guy.
My husband just starred in a Google Glass video. I always knew I’d one day be a celebrity’s arm candy.
Something started growing on my nose last night. I think it’s another nose.
I’ve invented a Ziploc Stupid Bag: It’s called the workplace.
The next time you hear someone in Kansas City refer to “the other side” of Troost, your reply should be, “Oh, you mean the west side?” It will break that person’s brain in a whole new way.
My growing-out pixie or, as I like to call it, my bob-mullet.
I really got lucky with my husband. It’s not easy finding a straight man who likes Depeche Mode.
I see my young face in my current face about as readily as I see a poem in a bowl of alphabet soup.
The way to a man’s heart is through his pericardium.
On playing the flute: Tone. Technique. Articulation. Intonation. Vibrato. Breathing. Each of these is needed to make the instrument sing, which in turn allows the body to sing. Today, I got my tone back. Now my body is electric.
My husband goes back to work tomorrow, which will give me more one-on-one time with my chihuahua.
It’s strange being home without my husband. My chihuahua and I are like a tricycle that’s lost one of its wheels.
The yard is dark with starlings.
I am sitting in the dark because the light switch is an inch beyond my reach.
I’m trying to rewrite Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as “Song of My Gas,” but it’s just not turning out right.
I’m thinking about opening a cuddling business to pay for flute music and poetry books. I need a business plan.
I’m wearing a heating pad as a crown because I have a royal pain.
There should be a setting on this heating pad called “Hell” because that’s how hot I need it to be. The highest setting is “6.” I need “666.”
I’ve decided to put an excerpt of a poem in the memo line for each check I write. Just another way to curate and disseminate poetry content.
If I had to be half a mannequin, I don’t know if I’d rather be the top half or the bottom half.
My hair and I have entered an awkward phase in our relationship.
I want to be a moth in my next life. The cocoon appeals to me far more than the womb.
When does inquiry into illness become an inquisition against the body?
I think I’ll induce a temporary chemical lobotomy by taking lorazepam. Then I’ll stare at the wall like a good girl.
If a form asks what state I live in, is “Chaos” an appropriate response?
The dog woke me up just in time to watch this great NutriBullet infomercial.
After we swallowed one another, we contained the world.
Music is like a second heartbeat.
Someone has short-sheeted my life.
Ghosts keep following me home. The living tell me I shouldn’t feed them, so I do.
Last night I dreamed that I cooked myself for dinner. Ten minutes. One pot of boiling water. Enough to serve all my friends—and one enemy.
I came home tonight smelling like other people, and I liked it.
I will not give thanks for anything I do that causes another living being to suffer.
I’ve been wearing this day inside out and backwards.
Sometimes breath passes for language.
Today, I asked my husband to bring me some almonds. He misunderstood me and went off in search of condoms.
The long arm of the blah.
If I collect enough books, my belongings will be so heavy I won’t ever be able to run away from home.
I’m trying to live like a hamster: little piles of the things that sustain me tucked all around my living space.
Sometimes I mistake the table of contents of a literary journal for a poem, and I think, This poem is really weird.
I am a pajama-based life form.
Erotic or chihuahua? While watching television, I feel a tongue begin to lick my big toe.
Erotic or chihuahua? Something warm presses against me while I am sleeping.
Erotic or chihuahua? I yawn, and suddenly there is a tongue in my mouth.
Erotic or chihuahua? Something brings me little gifts each day, tokens of affection. A squeaky toy. A ball.
Erotic or chihuahua? Something says, I could nuzzle in your bosom for hours. I will never leave you.
Erotic or chihuahua? Something goes to pieces whenever my husband and I kiss. Something cries. Something wails. Something tries to wedge itself between us.
Erotic or chihuahua? Something kicks my husband in the back repeatedly until he is forced to get out of bed. Then it rolls over and says, “Hold me.
Erotic or chihuahua? Something says, I will watch bad movies with you, all the ones you love. Ice Castles. Legend. Sweet November. That is how devoted I am to you.
I emailed my husband a poem, and he replied by sending me a to-do list.
I am a long drive through ugly country.
Sometimes, we need to give people more than they deserve.
Today, the sun rises over endless fields of what.
I’m having a strange day in which everything my left hand touches feels rough and everything my right hand touches feels smooth.
Sometimes I feel like a faint pencil line under all the wrong words.
I want so much for this day.
I sing sweet songs while I piddle around the house, just like my mother did. My husband studies the qualities of maple leaves scattered on a table, just like his father would.
Driven to abstraction.
I just saw a flock of birds flying in the shape of a giant bird.
I intended to write a piece on poetry yesterday, but instead I experienced a tear in my retina. Right eye. Noonish. I saw white lights like fireworks, followed by a hovering gray blob that obscured my vision. It was roughly the shape of an acorn cap or a winter hat with a fuzzy ball on top. An ophthalmologist at KU Medical Center saw me right away. He looked deep into my vitreous gel with a fancy headlamp that made him look like he was about to go spelunking and exclaimed, I see the acorn in your eye! I thought he was making a joke, but apparently he could see a bundle of proteins torn from my retinal lining floating in the gel.
Why does the poetic image communicate faster than other forms? A few years ago, I asked this very question on Facebook and then proceeded to answer it myself. How annoying of me. My answer was as follows:
Arthur Koestler has an interesting theory. He says poetry requires thinking on a third plane, a kind of “bisociation,” meaning perceiving a situation or an idea in two individually consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference. This bisociation disturbs our patterns of thinking/feeling and causes a crisis, which requires a third plane of thinking/feeling to arise, one that is antithetical to but that does not negate the strife of the two.
Since this moment of entry into the poem is a moment of crisis, I would argue that we respond to the crisis the way we are hard-wired to respond to all crises—as quickly as possible. Our entry into the poem is similar to pulling a hand away from a scalding object before realizing on a conscious level that the object is hot. It’s instinctual, a survival tactic. Perhaps bisociation in poetry works on this level as well—because of the crisis the poem presents, we move swiftly to a different mode of thinking/feeling that allows us to enter the poem without completely fracturing our identities, without obliterating our ways of seeing and moving through the world. Bisociation is a way of surviving the poem, of seeing the world as we experience it on a day-to-day level, then seeing the world of the poem itself, then seeing a plane on which to stand, one that straddles the two and gives the reader a place to exist, to breathe.
Perhaps this is why poems work on us so quickly, why the image communicates faster in poetry than in other forms of writing. Precisely because poems put us in crisis.
I removed that post from Facebook years ago, but I stashed it in my poetry files. I came across it today and appreciated it as one way to understand how poems work. I also appreciated my former self for leaving me this trace. It could prove useful when people ask me what poems are, how the mean, and under what conditions they operate.
If you look at a vertical sagittal section of the human eye, you are supposed to see something that resembles a camera. That’s not what I see. I see an angelfish without the fins. I’m sure this says something fundamental about me. The watery fish in the head. The brain home to an aquarium. The two specimens that cannot swim, that cannot escape, that do my bidding, that are forced to document the production.
In his poem “Trace,” Eric Pankey writes: To occupy space is to shape it. / Snow, slantwise, is not white / But a murk of winter-black basalt. / In the gullied, alluvial distances, / On the swallow-scored air, / Each erasure is a new trace.
Having a torn retina is not without its consequences. I feel like a mean girl punched me in the eye. Maybe at a bar. Maybe after I looked at her the wrong way. Maybe after she mistook the fireworks in my eyes for something I never intended.
If you look closely enough at a poem while wearing a headlamp, you can enter its recesses and observe the detail held within its vitreous gel. What drifts and where. What has lost viscosity with age and use. What holds fast. But when you occupy the poem, you change it. We change things by looking. There is no way around this.
When I told my husband about my retina, he asked if reading poetry might have caused the tear. I said poetry had no bearing on what happened. He seems to think poetry leads to disaster. I’ve tried to tell him for years now that we all lead ourselves to disaster, with or without poetry. Poems simply document the path from cradle to grave; from point of entry to point of no exit; from one dark, craggy landmark to another.
Dana Henry Martin 