Deema Shehabi’s first book, Thirteen Departures from the Moon

How does your identity as a Palestinian woman, and your international background, inform or shape your poetry?

Certainly, the first impetus for writing poetry began with experiencing the foundational loss of Palestine, the way of life there told by the stories of my mother and grandmother (who were both gifted storytellers), and the loss (by geography and migration) of an extended beautiful family of aunts, uncles, and cousins, many of them courageous, vibrant, and utterly human. That sorrow—and an accumulating desire to immortalize that loss—spurred my poetry. I began searching for a language to give to that sentiment. The language that initially emerged carried a foreign sentiment with it, so it took a while to make it less strange to the American reader.

The voice that rises in poems from Thirteen Departures from the Moon took a couple of decades to develop fully. In looking back at the trajectory of my writing, I discovered that I often oscillated between strangeness and familiarity and between acceptance and rejection (and perhaps I still do). When I arrived in the US in 1988 and walked around an American college campus, I couldn’t help but feel alienated despite my tremendous excitement. Because of that alienation or exile, I turned to writing as an anchor. It provided me with respite from that gnawing feeling.

You write in poems like “At the Dome of the Rock” and “Blue” with lavish longing for your homeland and sorrow for its age-old losses and conflicts. Does your poetry continue to spring from this source, or have you turned to different sources in recent writing?

The source is constantly changing. In recent writing, I’ve turned more toward listening (I mean really listening) to people’s vernacular in speaking. This has given rise to new writing, which is more prosaic than my early work. I am currently collaborating with the poet Marilyn Hacker on a renga collection that started in January of 2009 during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. We each take a word from each other’s renga and braid it into our own renga, resulting in a kind of call and response effect that has taken place over several years now. The personae and geography may change but the renga are anchored by a kind of fragmentary narrative.

Another source that I’ve turned to in recent years is the love for the beauty of the land where I live now. Mt. Diablo and the surrounding valleys, creeks, and rolling hills are a perennial source of inspiration.

here lies a man who felt compelled to visit time and time again the house where he’d spent the majority of his childhood; a house that his parents had built above the intersection of two creeks in a shadowy cove they’d purchased upon moving to a small mountain town; a house made of wood and stone with a sixteen-windowed room on one side that let in the sun and overlooked a rhododendron thicket; a house that smelled often of oranges and baking bread and the deceased’s mother’s perfume; a house whose three unfolding bathroom mirrors opened a corridor into infinity; a house whose vents the deceased inspected for lost toys, staring down the oblivion-dark holes as metallic-smelling wind stung his eyes; a house that figured in one of the deceased’s recurring dreams, in which he rose from a manger (less delusions of grandeur than an obsession with nativity scenes) and watched as a 16mm movie of his home was projected onto a screen, a magical window through which he then vaulted himself, landing upon the mossy, mole-rutted front yard, which he climbed, then up the concrete the stairs and through the house with its dark wood banister and upside-down yellow wallpaper and through the kitchen, and onto the back porch, where he found his mother dancing in a wedding dress; a house which, after his parents had procured a larger and wilder swathe of land in a more remote location, they’d sold to an older woman and her husband (a scientist who had at one time worked for NASA), though it turned out that this man was abusive and the woman herself believed the house to be haunted, a claim that the deceased found beguiling, as he could recall zero instances of actual phantasmagoric activity, though the deceased and his sister had, as kids, engineered their own makeshift haunted houses, hanging tarps from the ceilings to create passageways, lighting candles, smearing their faces with a mixture of bananas and food coloring, tying semitransparent dental floss to old coolers and pulling the strings when visitors walked by, thus revealing the decapitated bodies of dolls, or throwing a wig out of the dark space beneath the stairs, which was supposedly a cave where a crazy woman scalped people, and of course none of this was nearly as scary as the deceased liked to think, and their house was not really haunted—at least that’s what they thought, because the current owner was insisting that there must be a spirit or two in the house and that she had heard cupboards opening and closing and doors opening and closing, had heard something walking on the floor above her when she knew no one was there, a series of events that had lead the woman to decide to contact whatever it was that had been making these noises, so, one night, when she was alone, she’d turned out the lights and lit candles and incense and laid herself down on the couch and said, “Okay, whatever or whoever you are, make yourself known,” after which the door to the attic, which was a place the deceased had been uncomfortable to enter and whose pink insulation and old mothballed clothes and big hefty trunks had remained very clear in his memory, opened and closed several times, an activity that had scared the woman, and so she said, “Stop!” and the door stopped and she felt exhilarated and also quite frightened but now knew for sure there was a spirit living there and somehow she figured out that this particular spirit was a Native American girl who had been buried on the same site as the house and that she had never been given an adequate funeral, so the woman performed some sort of ritual and things have been good ever since, except for the fact that her husband had moved out and away and now the woman lived in the house all by herself and once a year the deceased would go back and take a tour of the place where he’d lived and think how small this house is and how different it looks now that the wallpaper has been torn off and how different the basement looks now that it’s been finished, and how lonely the house seems without all the stuff that the deceased remembers had once been here, and which he superimposes onto the rooms with his mind, and why is he drawn here again and again, and could he be said to be a kind of ghost himself, an entity who haunts a house that is no longer his but always will be, a place that no longer recognizes him, a home that has died and comes to life only in dreams

the muddled middle of the road
you fall back on (regression toward)

the handholds where you scrabble up
whatever (ways and) digits grip,

and muscle (lean and) to a stand—
legs set, arms wide, Vitruvian—

above the solid, square-cut point
of (as in golden) something Meant.




Wall Work

a paradelle of falling to pieces

The cracks I fought with knife and spackle: back.
The cracks I fought with knife and spackle—back
in spite of spent summers, bristled with labor.
In spite of spent summers, bristled with labor,
cracks bristled in spite. Summers, I fought them,
back spent with spackle and the knife of labor.

Beneath the moldering skin and mask of plaster,
beneath the moldering skin and mask of plaster
a winter’s trickle of ice-dam seepage drains.
A winter’s trickle of ice-dam seepage drains.
Beneath the skin, while the moldering mask of the ice
drains winters, seepage damns a trickle of plaster

whose always-failing fall in a dust of crumbles,
whose always-failing fall in a dust of crumbles
patters trouble into the maddened ear,
patters trouble into the maddened ear
whose failing maddened Fall. In a patter of dust,
always, trouble crumbles into the ear.

Winter’s skin cracks. The knife crumbles to dust.
Always, beneath the masque of maddened summers,
Trouble’s dam is in labor. Who’s fought while spackle,
in seepage of ice, is moldering with the fall?
Its patter trickles spite into the ear.
I bristle back at the plaster, failing and spent.




Stream


At an on-ramp light for westbound 94,
where billboard-big, fake-Oriental letters
claque for “Art Song’s Chicken Wings!” she’s snagged—

yanked back to the sun-warmed flow of Lieder,
where Schubert’s trout, alive in the piano trill,
twists in the air with a shaken spray of droplets
and leaps away, as the song says maidens must,
from the line, the seductive craft of the fisherman,
whom she can picture there in his hip waders
but who had nothing to do with it, in fact,
because the songs themselves seduced her, crooning
Give me thy hand, thou fair and tender vision,
angling with hidden barbs: the love of an art
the world shakes off, the meathooks of her loans,
the slivers of her opera-chorus pay
with all the other fish, landed and flopping,
who started again (da capo now! clean entrance!)
the baritone retrained in medical records,
the tenor’s hands at the wheel of the 16A,
the thousand thousand coloratura coders,
dreams of beauty shuddered away like water,
lost, all lost, no time to mourn them now

—because the signal snagging her has blinked
to green, and she must leap, must hurl herself
into the churning stream, where it’s a hazard
to hesitate, to dwell on things, to breathe.

“Too bad your wife couldn’t come,” the Old Man says, piling slices of salami onto a buttered roll and then adding hot red peppers and lettuce.

I notice Jade and her old man give each other a quick look. “You know Didi,” Uncle Joe says “Busy getting the house ready for the baby.” He’s bald, like my Old Man, only doesn’t make an elaborate attempt to hide it via a comb-over. He’s building a sandwich of prosciutto and olives and onions and cheese. It’ll turn into an eating contest between the two of them before the night is out. That’s how it works with dagos.“The work’s never done,” Ma says, and she knows, having squeezed out nine of us. “I haven’t talked to her in so long. Not since . . .” her voice trails off.

Jade’s wearing a wrinkled black dress with no stockings, her feet bare and folded up under her on the couch. Her eyes are blue, a rarity in our family, and perfectly round and hollow. “You got big,” I say.

“So did you,” she says. “Not as big as me. Remember the last time I was here?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I remember that.” Joey and Jade’s brother, Max, are outside somewhere, I’m assuming getting stoned, I don’t know what else they’d be doing, it’s all there is to do in this town though I have a feeling it’s all there is to do in most places, and some of the Old Man’s other brothers come by the house and pretty soon the place is filled with loud voices and cigarette smoke and ladies with too much make-up, and I take Jade’s wrist and lead her upstairs to me and Joey’s room.

“Who’s the kid’s old man?” I say. I’m lying back on my bed and instead of taking Joey’s, she’s laying right next to me. She smells of a long flight but also like flowers, flowers that have been crumpled and thrown away and just have a hint of scent left.

“I’m not saying,” she says. “I haven’t told anybody and that’s my policy.”

“Your old man let you get away with that?”

“What can he do? Beat me?”

“My Old Man sure as hell would beat it out of you; he’ll beat anything out of anybody. You know who the father is?”

“I’m not a slut,” she says. “There’s only the one. He knows it’s his.”

I light a joint and she’s miffed when I don’t offer her any. “You’re not allowed to smoke,” I say.

“Everybody treats me like I’m walking around with the crown fucking jewels,” she says. “It’s a baby. Women were having them in caves. It isn’t that big of a deal. Give me that. Jesus, your mother had nine. Just because my mother lost one they think I’m prone, like it runs in the family.” She takes a long and deep hit, holds it in for far longer than I ever manage to do, and blows it out in a thick rope of pure gray. I like getting high with girls; it’s different than smoking with guys. “You gonna still go to school when it comes? It being the baby,” I say.

“Of course. It’s not like I have to drop out. We’ll figure out a schedule. My dad thinks my mom will be home by then and she can carry the load but it isn’t gonna work like that.”

“Your mom home? Where’s your ma?”

“My father will fucking kill me if he knows I said anything. My mom’s back in the hospital. Do not say anything. He’s all ashamed, figures everybody will think it’s his fault he drove her crazy and not understand that she was actually crazy all on her own. The thing is, it is his fault. He’s an asshole.”

“My Ma’s come close twice now to ending up in Gowanda, our version of the nuthouse,” I say. “You don’t know what asshole is until you live with my Old Man. You’re living on easy street. Your old man is the runt of that litter.”

“Fuck you, Frankie,” she says, and shoves her body over and playfully pushes at me. “Fuck you.” I like when pretty girls swear. “I don’t think my mom’s coming home anytime soon,” she says. “She’s pretty much full-on crazy. Don’t even ask me what she did. It’s like not having a mom anymore.” She suddenly has a handful of stray tears running down her cheeks and instead of pretending not to notice, like I usually do when a girl cries, I grab her a few tissues from the box on my nightstand.

“You sure you’re gonna have enough to clean up after you play with yourself?” she says. “Please don’t do it when I’m in the next bed. Or if you do, at least tell me you’re doing it, so I won’t have to wonder,” she says. We’re sharing a room for the next four nights, me and Jade. Joey and Max are gonna be sleeping on couches downstairs and Jade’s getting Joey’s bed.

She won’t tell me who it was she fucked. Instead she wants to know all about everything I’ve been doing. Am I still all in love with Lena Gustafson? No, I say. Have I ever taken acid? Yes. What was it like? Like peeling back the world and discovering what’s underneath, the control room, all the switches and buttons and colorful wires. I open the windows next to my bed and the smoke drifts out.

There’s a whole ruckus going on downstairs and I assume the uncles will head out to The Hideaway soon enough. It belongs to Uncle Sammy, another brother, and it’s where they always end up while the aunts clean the mess left behind. “You’re lucky,” she says, “to have so much family here. We have nobody near us. Everybody seems so happy here.”

I’m speechless. Happy we’re not. Ma teeters on the brink of hearing voices and earning herself a trip to the Shock Room like her two sisters did before her. That doesn’t seem bad compared to having a mother already actually in the Shock Room, but that’s just the surface of what we have going on here.

Then next day Jade insists I take her to Caruso’s for an Italian beef. She has a craving and remembers it from her other trips here. There’s no talking a pretty girl out of anything when it comes to me. She brought some weed with her, actually hid it up inside herself for the plane ride, rightly thinking nobody wants to give a gynecological exam to a pregnant teen just in the name of national security. The bud is bomb bomb, as Jade calls it. Another difference between here and out West. Not only is the weather better there, the people more relaxed, the girls prettier, the smoke is much better, way fucking better, and I’m baked to the gills when we push the double glass doors in and grab a front booth, sitting right under a massive vintage poster advertising a visit to Chautauqua by the great tenor himself. Not that it matters but my Nana saw both Carsuo and Mario Lanza in her lifetime and said Caruso was a piker compared to Lanza. Thought I’d throw that in just in case you had any interest. It’s all I know about opera. I already got a bellyful of fat Italians screeching anytime I step out of my bedroom so it’s not like I’d pay any money to see or listen to it. The Old Man and the crew are golfing so there’s no way I’ll run into him here, though most times there’s a good chance he’ll be holding court in a back booth, his jesters paying fealty by laughing when nothing he says is actually funny.

We get the pretty waitress. She remembers me from the last time we saw each other. She doesn’t say anything but I can tell. She borders on icy but it might also be I’m so stoned I’m getting paranoid.

“You gonna marry the guy?” I ask, just trying to start some conversation. I’m getting nervous. Hearing her breathe in the bed next to me all night. Girls breathe deeper than guys when they sleep. They give off warmth that fills the entire room. It just comes off their bodies. It isn’t anything they can help. This morning when she came back from the shower I pretended to still be asleep, but I doubt it mattered to her whether I was or wasn’t. She just went ahead and took her towel off and went prancing about putting her panties and bra on, and throwing another wrinkled dress over the top of her like I wasn’t even there. I kept my eyes closed for most of it, but only for most.

“Do I look Mormon or Mexican to you? Maybe when I’m eighteen but I’m not getting married before then. He said he will, that he’ll marry me then.”

“People change their minds.”

“It’s not up to him,” she says. “He’ll marry me if I want.” She tells me the whole story, even tells me who it is. Josh, which is a douche name. “You’re the only person other than him in the whole world who knows,” she says. “I don’t even have any friends left because I won’t tell any of them.” He’s one of her teachers at school. Her English teacher. She goes over to babysit his kid or to get tutoring and they fuck. She threatens to tell anytime he loses any interest.

“You’re blackmailing him?” I say.

“I’m protecting my interests,” she says.

“I don’t get wanting to be with someone you have to blackmail to get to stay. That you have to blackmail to be with you. I can still fuck Lena,” I say, “but I have no interest because she’s fucking another dozen guys too,” I say.

“That’s not the only reason he stays, moron. He stays because he likes fucking me. He’s in it too deep to just stop so he might as well enjoy it. As far as letting him go, who else would have me? He’s the only person outside of my mom who’s ever even come close to making me feel a little loved. Who would have a person like me, with a baby?”

I remember what she looked like when my eyes were open this morning, wet black hair hanging half-way down her bare back, the curve of her womanly ass, cheeks still bright red from the hot shower, like she just got spanked, what I could see of her front peering back at me when she bent over, how she stood looking at herself in the mirror, legs hip length’s apart, applying lipstick before getting dressed. “Pretty much anybody,” I say. “Anybody would want to have you.”

“It’s pretty cute still having somebody trying to get into my panties when I’m this pregnant,” she says. “Even if they are my relative. It’s really sweet how nice you keep being to me.”

She catches me with a mouth full of sandwich otherwise I might protest. It’s just easier to say the right things to girls who look and act like Jade. Her teacher friend must be powerless around her. He’s in his late 20’s, married but separated, his wife a fat blob maybe ten years older than him. Then along comes Jade. She’s the kind of girl who if she was in one of my classes I’d stare at while teasing my dick with the end of a ruler. I wouldn’t care if anybody saw. With some food in me and a cherry shake, I’m feeling a little more relaxed and so I tell her, I tell her the kind of girl I think she is.

“You’d play with yourself looking at me? That’s creepy. But a little hot. I think I just got a little wet.” She actually reaches under the table and checks herself with a finger. “I am,” she says. “You’re a bad cousin.”

“I’ll tell you my secret now,” I say. “One of them. You know how I said I was staying here for college? I lied. My Ma doesn’t know it yet but I’m coming to your part of the country. One state over. The Old Man says we should wait until the very last minute to tell her so she doesn’t start the worrying yet. I can visit you.”

She’s lost in a trail of thought and I’m not sure she even heard me. Girls have a way of doing that, suddenly not being there right in the middle of a conversation, leaving me alone with just their bodies and none of the rest of them. Then she comes back again when I’m not expecting it. “You really think I’m worthwhile?” she says. “I’d rather be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me than be alone. I’m terrified of being alone.”

“That’s where you and me are different. I got eight siblings. Alone is my desired location.”

“You and me can be alone together,” she says.

“The baby too,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “That.”

The pretty waitress slaps the bill on the table, doesn’t even ask how the food was. “She’s in a snit,” I say.

“That’s because she’s preggers,” Jade says. “She’s in that really tired first part, where all you ever want to do is sleep. I wanted to die then. If you wanted to look at me, she says, if you wanted to look at me while, you know, you did it, I’d let you.”

“What’d you say?”

“You know,” she says. “I’ll take my clothes off for you. If you wanted.”

“No,” I say. “About the waitress? She’s pregnant?”

“Why do you care about her so much? Yeah, it’s easy to tell. She’s probably closing in on three months. I feel embarrassed now. I thought you’d be excited by what I said, what I offered. Now I feel like an idiot.”

The pretty waitress is pregnant. I feel very sober. Not clearheaded but sober. Jade is pregnant, the pretty waitress is pregnant. Thanks be to god Ma isn’t pregnant again. “We’re cousins,” I say. “Is there something wrong with you? We’re blood. Plus, Jesus, you’re knocked up. Like I can jack off looking at someone pregnant. Big pregnant like you, not like her.” I point over at the waitress who scowls at me. “I’m not a pervert. Jesus, we’re fucking cousins. Leave the tip and let’s get out of here.”

Joey’s back in his bed that night and the next. Jade refuses to talk to me or even look at me, for that matter. She spends a lot of the time on the phone and even more time sitting in a chair out back, staring off at something only she can see. It must be mighty interesting because she hardly ever looks away. “Don’t worry about her,” Uncle Joe says. “She gets moody like this. It’s the hormones. She was always moody to start with.” He launches off into a story about how the best thing about the pregnancy is that she doesn’t look fat anymore and that when he told her that she didn’t talk to him for two days. “I complimented her, for crissakes, and she was still pissed off at me.”

The night before they leave, after dinner I’m in my room when there’s a knock. “I need to pack up my stuff,” Jade says. “I can come back later.” She’s wearing her white dress.

“Stay,” I say. “Close the door. Just close the door. You wanna get high?”

“You don’t expect me to pretend you didn’t say those things to me, I hope. You looked like my father when you said it. If I closed my eyes I’d have sworn it was him.”

“No,” I say. “No. I don’t expect that. I just talk easier when I’m smoking.”

“You’ll have to do without your little crutch,” she says.

“Come one.”

“Nope.” She’s smiling, enjoying her little power over me. “You’ll have to relax some other way.”

“The only other way I have is jerking off.”

“You’ll have to do that with my clothes on,” she says. “Oh, alright,” she says, and pulls a baggy out of her purse. “Just because I’m smoking with you doesn’t mean I forgive you. I just don’t want to have to shove this inside my pussy again tomorrow and it’s either that or let it go to waste. I was going to give it to my cousin but then he acted like a douchebag to me.”

“That was the baggy that was inside of you?” I say.

“You wanna sniff it, go ahead.”

“Jade,” I say. “I’m gonna tell you something. Just like I’m the only person who knows about that teacher who, I think, is using you and you should fucking dump and have arrested, by the way, you’re the only one with this.”

“Frankie, are you gonna cry? You look like you might cry.” She hands me the tissues but I don’t need them. My eyes are watering from the smoke.

“I’m not gonna cry,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re one of them. No tears. They’re unmanly.”

The weed has brought us back to where we should have been all along. I pick up the baggie and draw in deeply through my nose. It smells more like pot and plastic than it does of her. “Women cry more than enough to make up for guys who don’t cry,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “Usually the women with those very guys.”

“My Ma was convinced my Old Man was up to no good,” I tell her.

“Isn’t that how he makes his living?” she says.

“Not that kind of no good. I think she must have thought he had a girlfriend.”

“He is very good looking,” she says.

I picture my Old Man, his intricate comb-over and big nose. “Whatever,” I say. “I personally think she’s bazzo. Me and Joey both do. But I go along and I follow him. He goes where he goes. The Hideaway, Caruso’s, home, back to The Hideaway.”

“People are boring,” she says. “Everybody could have so much fun if they just made an effort.”

“Oh, he’s efforting,” I say. “The Old Man is efforting.” I tell her the story, leaving out the unimportant details. How I saw him leave The Hideaway and get into a car and I followed it. How the pretty waitress from Caruso’s got out of the car, followed by the Old Man. How I watched as they kissed and then it looked like he fingered her, and then he took his cock out and she got on her knees and he put it into her mouth. Held her by the head. I told her how big it was, the size of it when he was trying to put it away in a hurry when they noticed the car. How in a panic trying to leave, I ran over the waitress’s cat three separate times. How they surely saw and recognized me. How while my college tuition may or may not be a bribe, it sure feels like one. And how if the pretty waitress from the place we had lunch is pregnant then I’m gonna have yet another brother or sister, this one most unwelcome. “I’m really sorry I said those things to you. None of them were true.”

“Holy fuck,” she says. “You killed her cat?”

“Splat,” I say.

“Was it really that big?”

“It looked like he was wrestling with an electric eel,” I say. “I must take after Ma’s side of the family, I think. You gonna let me see you naked? I did a little already, the other morning.”

“I fucking knew it!” she says. “I took forever getting dressed just so you’d wake up. I wanted you to wake up. You had a boner the entire night. I could see your sheets lifted. It’s not that bad, Frankie. Things are gonna happen no matter what. I’m gonna have a baby whether I want it or not; not that I ever considered not having and keeping it. I never considered anything but what I’m doing. But still, it’s out of my hands now. And all this is out of yours. Let’s be kissing cousins. That’s what you said to me when I was like twelve, you fucking perv.”

“You were fourteen,” I say.

“I might as well have been twelve,” she says. “I’d have done it then too. I had a crush on you then, too. Come here.”

Her mouth is softer than I remembered. Richer and deeper, as if pregnancy has expanded her entire invisible self and I’m licking at the entrance, plunging my tongue into the ever-expanding depths of this new space.

I’m not gonna give you the details. She’s my cousin and that’s different from another kind of girl. Not a sister. Definitely not a sister, but there’s still got to be some protective edge. Or only a couple of details. She’s not wearing any panties under her dress. She feels the need to breathe down there. Her breasts are no longer globs of fat but are fully formed, swollen to the point of veiny, the pink crowns strained and stretching, preparing themselves for their primary duty. When I slide into her the first time, her lying on her side and me behind her, it feels like suddenly rediscovering a piece of information I never even knew I had in the first place. I kiss the back of her white, white neck, nibble on her tiny ears and neck and my hands explore the slope of her belly, the rock hard solidity of it. It’s sudden and not very subtle and I put my hands on it, wrap one arm under her and the other over the top, envelop her, and my hands meet at the highest point, only it’s more like it’s holding me than me holding it, this place inside of her where I can feel the baby shift and kick, small dings against my hands.

“He’s happy,” she whispers.

“So am I,” I whisper back. It’s slow and gentle, the first time, I treat her like she’s something that can be broken, but the times after that are much more theatrical, like a performance involving gymnasts and contortionists. She greedily takes in every last drop I have to offer and I greedily give every last that I have.
The bedroom door’s unlocked. Anybody can walk in at anytime. In a house with nine kids and an Italian mother, you’re lucky if you can take a shit without someone hanging all over you, asking for help with a homework problem or being told to surrender your underwear for a load of whites that she’s just starting. What would they say if they walked in, saw me and Jade naked, the only light in the room coming from the streetlight outside my window, me inside of her, the way we’re kissing and tearing at each other, like there’s some big obstacle other than her belly standing in our way and we’re determined to tear it down and finally get to the truth of the matter, uncover the one goddamn secret that keeps us all bumping into each other every day?
If Ma walked in she would faint or start praying. Joey would storm away pissed that he got stuck playing nursemaid to the younger brother. The Old Man catching us would be ripe. He’s very big on respecting women and in his mind, or at least how he talks, not how he acts, fucking them is disrespectful, unless you’re trying to crank out babies, of course. Then fuck away.

“I love you, Frankie,” Jade says. I tell her I love her back. Neither of us believes it but it sure feels good to pretend we do.

Respect for women is the topic of a popular speech of his, of the Old Man’s. It’s a story about his parents, my Nana who died a couple of years ago and the Old Man’s old man. He died when Nana was still pregnant with the Old Man and none of us obviously ever met him and we don’t really even have a name for him. They owned a small grocery store and a bakery. This was when she was carrying the Old Man around in her, seven other kids at home in various stages of growth. They’d get to the store early together every morning, by four am, leaving the older ones in charge, and she’d fire up the stoves for the fresh bread they sold every day, and he’d lug barrels of olive oil around and unwrap the meats and cheeses and sweep, even though he probably swept six hours earlier when they closed.

One morning she was sick, Nana was. She had a rattling cough. A fever. Her tossing and turning kept the Old Man’s old man from sleeping. You stay home today, he told her, in Italian of course.

I make the bread, she said. Apparently she was the only one capable of operating the ovens.

We’ll use day old bread, he grunted. I assume he grunted. The men in this family grunt.

The story goes that he left her there in bed and walked to the store and was behind the meat counter when he heard a familiar noise, a hissing sound, the gas of the ovens. He stormed into the kitchen and there she was, holding an already wet tissue in her hand, wet from her constant cough, standing on a stool and peering into the highest oven, like she forgot something in there. She turned and looked at him. Fresh bread, is what she said. Fresh bread today. The Old Man’s old man, obviously now I know where the Old Man gets it, shut off the gas, took an axe from a wall in the back and began to hammer at the fronts of the stoves. He ripped their doors off. He pulled one clean out of the wall. At the end of it, covered in sweat, out of breath, he looked at her, she was standing there with her hands on her hips, giving him the evil eye, and he said, No fresh bread today. I personally think the old guy comes off as a slightly more psychotic version of the Old Man himself, but apparently the point is that the damage caused was a small price to pay to keep his wife well. A lot of good it did, being that he caught her cold and died three months later of pneumonia.

Jade’s hovering over me, her belly threatening to come tumbling down and crushing me in an avalanche. Her hair drapes my face. She moves her head and swishes it back and forth against my cheeks. I can’t say enough about the way she kisses, what she tastes like. I don’t know what respect is, but cheating on my Ma is not respect. He can tell all his little stories but the facts remain what they are. I’m not sure where in that tale he found the dispensation to knock up the pretty waitress at Caruso’s but then again, he never even did know his old man, he wasn’t even born yet, so he must have heard the story second hand and here I am giving it one more step removed from the original. For all that I know, there may very well have been fresh bread on that day.

Couldn’t you just turn and flee?

I asked you to flee – not dart, not dash, not make a clumsy run for the wings like a hound with heatstroke and a thorn in its paw.

Do you know what it is to “flee”?  Perhaps not, since all of your ilk are transfixed by screens and it’s doubtless difficult to animate a first-class flee, though I suppose some brainy little git is even now adjusting his quadrants and trying. You have no range yet, nor do you have the historical reach essential to the finer aspects of theatrical flight. Flouncing you do well enough. I’ve admired your overblown, hand-to-forehead imitation of Jo March’s triumph of overacting. The trouble is, you don’t know that it’s a parody. Pa.ro.dy. A kind of in-joke that you’re not yet in on. Jo didn’t know this either, of course, but she’s a fictional character and so can be excused. Now, look: the villain is coming at you – you know, like a stranger going to pull you into his car. You spy him. He’s creepy but he looks like your brother. You let him approach, though you’re a tad dubious. Du.bi.ous. Oh, it’s my cute teenage brother. I wonder why he’s wearing that sinister cape. Sin.is…. It means icky. And scary. Icky-scary. Closer, closer… Hi, Older Brother, what’s going on? Why is your face so white? Why do you have such a sin.is.ter aspect? Such a glint in your eye? (And, yes, we’ll be rehearsing the theatrical glint, you can be sure, Ryan Koplik, don’t be looking so smug. Smmm.ug). Closer…. And Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am! Oh, my, this isn’t my brother. This isn’t my brother at all…. but someone DISGUISED as my brother, wishing to do me in. Do. Me. In. And before you can whisper, arched eyebrows, you’re off the stage, Missy, and into the arms of Miss Jeannie, who will give you your apron and bucket and cue Mr. Dee for the musical interlude while Ryan completes his hideous transformation. Hid…. forget it.

Yes, this was better, but when you flee – don’t hurl yourself chest forward, legs lolloping as if they belonged to different behind. And make sure you face the audience when you flee. Let’s try that again, shall we? No, no, no. Don’t sidle like a palsied peekytoe, just, for Lord’s sake, flee.  A crab, Liam Capelli, a species of crab. And there’s nothing to titter about, Mackenzie Gottleib and the rest of you royal undead. Your turn will come. TIT.er. Er….. Ryan Koplik, please speak to Miss Jeannie about your fang problem. Those of you playing household items, on stage now. Plates, cups, and cutlery, stage right. Miss Jeannie is waving from the wings. Footstool, rug, armchair and the rest of the furnishings, stage left. Miss Jeannie is not waving from stage left. Tristan C., are you a spoon? Do spoons belong with furniture or dishes?  One of these things doesn’t belong. Thank you, Miss Jeannie. Ok, now, enchanted domestic objects, start your dance. Mr. Dee? Angelique Z. and Jaxon Ramirez, stay in character! That’s it, forks and spoons make way for the knives. Now, you enter, unwittingly, intent on your routine cleaning tasks. Don’t you ever dust and de-clutter your room? Help tidy around the house? No, of course you don’t. Well, you are still a little shaken from seeing your murderous un-brother, and you are trying to solace yourself with routine. So.lace. Like having cookies and milk after a bad day at school.  It doesn’t matter that you’re lactose intolerant. The milk and cookies aren’t mean to be literal. LIT.ER.AL. Just like you’re pretending to be frightened of Ryan who is pretending to frighten you by pretending to be your brother. Yes, and by pretending to have fangs.  Now, drop your bucket, lift the corners of your apron as you curtsey to the armchair. Show a modicum of surprise.  Mod….You find yourself – think about it – forced to do the cha-cha with the furniture.  This isn’t an everyday occurrence.  A certain show of surprise is called for.  Miss Jeannie, I think Kacey with a K needs some help with her snaps; she seems to need the rest room.  Tristan W., Angelique M., and the rest of the Hounds of Heck, start howling offstage.  No, you’re not to sound like a raggedy troop of flatulent baboons…. Flat….Must we really practice howling? The moon is out – Casey with a C. will be holding the eerily bright full moon over the backdrop with a long stick – Eer….Just hold a pretend stick up for now, Casey with a C, Miss Jeannie still has to finish painting the props.  The hounds come closer…. Closer….Who meowed?  Miss Jeannie, who was that who meowed?  Whoever that was who meowed is going to lose his speaking part.  No, at this juncture, you are not going to attempt to flee. Actually, fleeing will be futile at this juncture – Junc – since you are completely surrounded on all sides and there’s really no earthly way out.

He pushed the trunk lid closed with his elbow and started toward the side door. Was she charting his trips to the supermarket now? Estimating the contents of his freezer? She’d been curious about him, perhaps even, if truth be told, a little afraid of him ever since her grandson had disappeared. Little Aaron. Right out from under her nose. Without a trace. He’s not far Granny, he thought, stepping carefully around a patch of ice on the black asphalt. Right next door. He turned at the bottom of the steps and used the railing to reposition one bag and get a better grip on it. He didn’t need to look to see her out of the corner of his eye, still at the window watching him. She really was irritating. He had fantasized about what those vinyl curtains would do if touched with a flame. How the brown melt would eat into the sunflower pattern. Mrs. Meltzer smoked. Such a thing could well happen. She wore yellow-patterned dresses that looked like they were made of the same flammable material as her curtains. If touched with a flame, he thought, the old bird and her glasses would melt down just like the curtains.

He took the steps carefully, gingerly as they said, whatever that meant. Carefully meant with care, gingerly obviously meant with ginger. How in the world could non-native speakers be expected to learn a language riven with such insane expressions? He shifted the bags to attack the door. His back wasn’t what it used to be. Too many years of Santa lifting children, ha, ha. The fourth lumbar vertebra. That was where Krafft-Ebing located the ejaculation center. Oh, he’d pay for it in the morning. Five-thirty and the light was already fading. In California the Safeway store had been open all night. One could get up, as he regularly had, at three a.m., and be perfectly alone in frozen foods.

He remembered the days in Palo Alto when he had to take his laundry to a Laundromat, exposing his underclothing that way, having all those promiscuous gray metal vanes and porous, water-sucking surfaces pasting themselves to his intimate garments. What an outrage! How had he survived it? He pulled off a glove with his teeth and worked with rapidly numbing fingers at getting out his keys. He began fitting them into the double locks and deadbolts. Nippy, as they said. Nippy out. What a word. And how odd that only the weather could be nippy. That puppies, even though they had coined the phrase, so to speak, even though they were by far the nippiest creatures in the world, could not be referred to as “nippy.” As in, ‘Harry, the dirty bastard, has a very nippy puppy.’ No. In a student essay he would circle that in red.

The first two books in the series, on Dunstan Thompson, an American poet writing primarily during and after World War II, and Tamura Ryuichi, a poet revered in his native Japan but underacknowledged in the Western hemisphere, showcase fresh, distinct voices, each responding to WWII in their own ways. While Tamura (the surname comes first in Japanese) attempts to speak on behalf of a distinctly Japanese post-WWII mentality as well as on behalf of poetry itself, Thompson writes taut lines intimating psychological turmoil in his early poetry and Catholic-tinged meditative verse in his later poetry.

Thompson’s wartime poems often derive their resonance from their sense of interpersonal relationships. In this excerpt from “Songs of the Soldier,” as in other early Thompson poems, the violence of war (“Death blows the boys to ribbons”) is punctuated by glimpses of a wartime homoeroticism (“That sharp, unshadowed, surgeon’s light / By which heroes are turned inside / Out, their flamboyant guts put straight / Or lopped off.”). What’s striking is how seamlessly these elements complement each other.

You waited, excited, watched the door;

They wait for you forever, not

Caring how long. No new friends wear

Away your image, nor can plot

You damage. They keep true faith, their

Loyalty is endless. If a kiss

Woke you sometime, still living, swear

Love to the dead. A war means this (24-25).

In this excerpt the individual lover collapses into the insurmountable centrality of wartime. The reversal from the interpersonal (“their / loyalty is endless”) toward the larger social context of war (“swear / love to the dead”) is what undoes the desired fulfillment of eros.

While Thompson’s relationship to WWII centers primarily on interpersonal relationships, Tamura Ryuichi’s voice is more postapocalyptic, more concerned with articulating the ontology of poetic utterance in a postwar Japan. Though Tamura’s poetry frequently utilizes the first person, his is a much more universalized “I,” one that invites the reader to inhabit the poem (“I am vertical / I cannot stay horizontal,” he writes). As such, he is, as Wayne Miller points out in the introduction to the book, closely aligned with European postwar poetry. His attempts to carve out a place for language in the face of wartime devastation are perhaps best evidenced by his poem “Four Thousand Days and Four Thousand Nights,” published roughly four thousand days and nights after Hirohito’s surrender shocked Japan. The poem, which appeared in his first book and is here translated by Takako Lento, opens:

In order for a poem to be born

we must kill

we must kill many

we shoot down, assassinate, poison many we love

Look,

from the skies of four thousand days and nights

we shot down

the silence of four thousand nights and the backlight of four thousand days

simply because we wanted the trembling tongue of a small bird (14).

These plainspoken declarative lines recall Polish poet Tadeuz Rozewicz’s assertion, speaking of an old woman leading a goat, that “whoever thinks and feels / that she is not necessary / he is guilty of genocide.” But Christopher Drake’s essay, which the editors of this volume borrowed from the introduction to his translation of Tamura’s Dead Languages, informs these lines, explaining that Tamura, who initially avoided the draft by enrolling in Meiji University, was later declared unfit for naval service (“He was too tall to fit easily into the tiny cockpit of a zero fighter”). In July 1945, he was relegated “to artillery duty on the shore of Wakasa Bay[…] where a U.S. or Russian invasion was expected (74-75).” Drake continues,

The invasion never came. Tamura, unlike many of his friends in Kagoshima who were ordered to kill themselves as kamikaze pilots, survived; but he has never gotten over the experience of being certain he would die, and he has never stepped out of earshot of the voices of those who did die (2).

I saw my penis lying on a blanket
Next to a broken toaster oven.
Some guy was selling it.
I had to buy it off him.
He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I talked him down to seventeen.
I took it home, washed it off,
And put it back on. I was happy again. Complete.

–Detachable Penis by King Missile

I dreamt that it was morning and you said, as if it was no big thing, “Hey, kid, why don’t you take the penis today?  I’ve got a lot to do, so I won’t even really notice it’s gone, and it might be fun for you.”

“This is what I love about you,” my dream self said to the you in my dream.  “Nobody else would ever think to be that generous.”  And I meant it, as both my selves.  Ultimately, this is a dream about your generosity.

“Okay, then.  Let me keep it till after my shower, so I can give it to you clean,” you said, stepping out of the plaid pajama pants that I love that you wear, because there is something serious about a man who wears actual pajamas.  “Then I’ll show you a little bit about how it works, and you should be good to go.”

And then I was in your Montero, instead of my Volvo, driving downtown in a pair of old jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots.  I could feel the seam of the jeans sort of crushing my (or are they still your?) testicles—not painfully, just in a way that was clearly a change from how they had felt when I’d been standing up—as I sat in the driver’s seat.  Moving from gas pedal to brake was different with a cock and balls, much in the way it’s different when wearing heels.  I found myself constantly reaching down to readjust their positioning.

I had no clear destination.  The road was oddly consistent for a dream road, everything where it really is.  I pulled into the parking lot behind Great Wall restaurant to decide what to do.  Calling a friend seemed wrong. What would I say?  “Hey, Patyon lent me his dick.  Can I come over and fuck you?”  Even my dream self found that appalling.  Maybe it would have been all right if I was still twenty, but my friends are all, like me, middle-aged women long since over the excitement of novelty sex.

I got out of the truck and walked toward the adult bookstore.  I thought, Penises like pornography, right? But as I walked down the block, it occurred to me that I was still mostly myself and that someone I knew might see me going into the shop, so I went to Blue Moose for a cup of coffee instead.  I felt different, more masculine, and caught myself flirting with the tattooed, dreadlocked barista.  But I’m in there all the time, usually friendly, and she didn’t seem to notice when I stared alternately at her hips and breasts.  I tipped her well and took my dream latte to a table in the back corner of the coffeehouse, ashamed of myself.

I weighed the options. I could hire a prostitute but, in this small West Virginia college town, it wasn’t immediately obvious how I’d do that.  Also, it’s not like this was a disposable penis.  This was your penis and I wasn’t certain that I’d feel as positively inclined toward it afterward.  There are, I’m certain, prostitutes here, but probably not the storied sort who are well-groomed and erudite and command prices upwards of a few hundred dollars an hour.  The idea of putting your penis into a woman who seemed unclean, or even just a little dumb with bad teeth and a desperate air about her, wasn’t exciting.  It was disgusting.  So I ruled that out.

I thought about waiting until later and going to the local gay bar to see if I could find some game young man who’d find the whole thing entertaining enough to indulge me.  This seemed more likely and less awful than finding a prostitute.  Young men are the opposite of middle-aged women in this way, aren’t they?  Sexually adventurous, still excited by the idea of the transgressive?  But this is your penis, and since you don’t use it to have sex with boys, I’m not sure that I should.  Also, Vice Versa wouldn’t open for hours, long after we’d normally be in for the evening.  And I’d rather be at home than out trolling the bars, even on such an exceptional day.

I got back in the Montero. Before starting the engine, I reached down and cupped the crotch of my jeans, feeling the heft. Halfway down the dream road home, I awoke.  You were standing beside the bed in your solid-citizen pajamas, just getting up for the day.  Rolling toward you, I pulled the covers over my shoulders although it was summer and the house was already warm.

“I had the strangest dream,” I said, and told you what I had dreamt.

You said, “Only you, kid, would have that dream and end up too ethically conflicted to ever actually use the penis for anything.”  You shook your head and changed out of your pajamas into a pair of khakis and a button-down shirt.  Your daytime solid-citizen attire.

“But that’s why it’s interesting,” I said, sitting up in bed in a ratty old purple nightshirt I probably shouldn’t be wearing so early in our relationship.  “Is that what it’s like, having a penis?  Do you spend a lot of time thinking about opportunities to use it, and then dismissing most of them?”

“No.   There aren’t that many opportunities for using your penis.  If you used your penis two to four hours a week, that would be a lot.  There are 168 hours in a week, so you’re talking about a small percentage.  But 99.9% of your relationships have nothing to do with the penis.  You can be a man, but being a man’s got nothing to do with having a penis.  The penis is the last item on the menu.  A woman doesn’t want a penis, she wants a person.”

Which, of course, is true, but not at all what I was trying to understand.

Your name, take
thirty-three times at bed
or as needed,
gather two or more
in your name to
bring you to us,
please us.
Practice your names
no less than half an hour
each day or as directed,
remember with your last breath
to remember you,
bring us to you,
O rest O rest O rest.

O Beloved, you icon,
ascetic,
work ethic.
O illusor,
sustainer,
divine unwinder,
O twice-garlanded you.
O tincture, toddy, tongue.
O eyelid, toe tip, lung.
O body. Beyond.
O beyond-beyond too.

Slipper, you slip in, you spoon
our comforter-covered us,
you heavy our blankets,
rub our soles
and shoulders.
You swell and gush,
you prompt,
you hush,
you lull,
you lust,
you lotus,
O recall us all,
you all.




Application for Remembrance

Watchword, may you
grace my lips before meals,
may I sleeptalk you,
butter you up,
simple syrup you down.

Mindful, I balance my heart on my head to start,
my practices are stopwatched and enumerated,
pill-sized pronouns,
proper names,

but you—
every word is your name—

I recite you by heart, both speak
and hear your part,
inhale your iambs
on every throb and every stride,
enjamb you, try you, test you, cross you,

but you—
offer me a cigarette,
acclimate, endorse me,
then make me smoke outside,
chasten me, incite me, addict me sick
then snuff me—

hold my tongue.
Done.
Damn you,
overheard and obscured,
dream you, déjà vu you,
et tu, et tu, et tu.

May I let you down,
may I let you down easy,
swallow the smoke,
every gulp
another irrecoverable,
wet-eyed choke
toward you.




Lover’s Complaint

I spring-clean,
prune turned petals from the perennials,
donate my shirts to thrift shops,
and out-the-legs clothesline my verbs.
Pledging not to retain even my personality, I purge—

Then you show up on the doorstep
of the house I’ve heaved for you
when I’ve just about given up.
Your sandals throbbed flat,
sadra sweat-soaked and see-through,
you trace the perimeter, skim the gauzy drapes
which kitchen windows billow—

or you deliver a delicate parcel:
the halved heart
evicted for your stay—
your stopover—
your layaway—

or you hastily inhabit
the hollow of the hand
I hold out to you,
sloughed, rebuffed—

I may When?
I may When? again,
offer all,
and all and all,
but you won’t come in
till my beam breaks
and ceiling falls,
till I at last sacrifice
my least device,
my only keep,
my hard-won,
diamonded
belief—

Tim and I were in bed together when he saw the spoon. I’d accidentally left the closet open, I noticed, at the same moment he said, “What’s that?” and I knew exactly what he was referring to. He took the spoon out of the closet and carried it over to the bed. Reluctantly, I told him its story. “Put it on,” he said. But I didn’t feel like putting it on; I wasn’t in the right mood. “Probably won’t fit,” I said, but he insisted on slipping the straps over my shoulders and then it was like old times, only different. I’d never worn the spoon without clothes on before. Tim said, “I like it…I like how the straps push your tits together.” He started kissing me on the face and neck and we were back in bed when something unsettling happened in my brain. “Stop,” I said, and I was about to take off the spoon, only Tim didn’t want me to. “But it makes me think of my mother,” I told him, “and this isn’t when I want to be thinking of her.” “So think of me instead,” Tim said, and I tried, I really did, but it was still as if she was right there in bed with us. I pointed to the corner of the bed where I envisioned her sitting with her back to us, pretending to read a magazine, to give us some privacy, because Tim seemed like a nice guy, she’d said to me once, and of course it wasn’t her fault my unsettled brain had put her there in bed with us. “This really isn’t working,” I said and I tried to take off the spoon, only Tim stopped me again. “It’s not just that I like how you look in it,” he said. “It’s also the message—I don’t want anyone walking off with you either.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that. I didn’t have a problem with what the spoon said in the context of my mother; she was my mother and always would be; beneath what she said with the spoon I knew she’d be OK with whomever walking off with me just so long as I was happy. What the spoon said in the context of Tim, however, suddenly made the lightweight plastic on my back feel forged from the heaviest metal. Maybe if I’d been in love with him, I would’ve felt romanced by what he said with the spoon; there was no way of knowing. I took off the spoon, we argued, and then he left. The beginning of the end, which, I think, would’ve come about soon enough anyway; it wasn’t the spoon’s fault. Still, there was a time after I stopped seeing Tim when the sight of the spoon in my closet annoyed me. I considered getting rid of it, throwing it away, donating it, Goodwill—but having to explain to that person with the clipboard—it’s a giant plastic spoon with adjustable shoulder straps; now can I have a receipt for tax purposes? But I couldn’t part with the spoon, not the spoon my mother had given me. I just needed somewhere else to put it, a spot where I wouldn’t have to see it all the time and if I ever had someone over again, there’d be no chance of him seeing it. Unless I wanted him to—if and when I was sure he was the right person and only then, I might let him slip the straps over my shoulders.

My mother is a roving secretary and my father sees her in an office across the hall and that was that. He searches for her, floor by floor, because she never stays in one place too long, you see. And then, there she is in the lunchroom and their eyes meet and my father just knows. This is my father’s story.

My father is tall and handsome, a wave of dark hair, tanned skin. An Olympic javelin thrower, Tokyo ‘64.  Muscular, powerful, the body of a hero. My father is used to winning.

My mother, oh she’s pretty, but her teeth are like this: bent and gray, a little like a rodent’s. She doesn’t have, how do we say it: the va-voom of Southern California—the glamour of year-round sun, the melodrama of the beach. She grew up in a one-lane Mormon town, watching movies in the church house, stocking shelves at the General Store, which always smelled of cows. Of course she hides her hands in her lap. Of course she presses her lips together in a thin, pink line.  Of course she falls in love.

Their first date is in his living room; imagine what happens in the dark: maybe she presses her toes against the side of his thigh.  Maybe he caresses her calves. Maybe his hands roam across the angles of her hips, her other furtive places. Maybe her body is the first thing—the puzzle, the lock, the Gordian knot. What brilliant design! The writing on the wall. Yes it’s true, God knows a thing or two about desire. Even what my mother hides, like precious jewels in paper boxes.

Then my father is baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and they are married for time and all eternity and there is nothing she won’t give to him. There is nothing he can’t take. Then she is carrying his suitcase to the car and he is flying off to Europe. Then she is making eggs with milk gravy and he is selling her electric-blue Mustang for his fishing boat. Then she is sitting on a towel and I am standing ankle-deep in surf and my father is always somewhere else.

Since I first learned about them in college, I have loved broadsides. I heard about them first in their early context—single printed sheets distributed around 16th-century London, say, with gossip or news or a ballad. People still did this for poems, I read, except now they were more fine-art than news rag. The idea of making such a visible place for a poem, a beautiful, portable one, appealed to me. Not that I had seen one in person, or knew where one might find such things. Far away, letterpresses in Alabama and New York were rolling out text objects, but I dreamed in North Carolina, and the Internet was young.

Is a book like a room and a page like a meadow, a spot of ground? Fifteen years later, I still want a place for poetry that’s out in the open like that. My bookshelves burst with volumes of poetry. But when I think of how I’d like to be given a poem, I think of a page, a card, a sheet: something that reveals itself immediately, and is all of one piece, and that therefore demands all my attention.

As do the poems in Tuesday; An Art Project, which I’ve described above. I asked Jennifer S. Flescher, its originator and editor, what she thinks are the differences between poetry between covers and poetry on a flat sheet. “I feel like one of the things art publishing can and should do is offer a resting place for a work—a book or a poem or an image,” she wrote. “Poems are complex and need time and space. I hope that a card gives them a little more of that.” And: “My idea, too, was that they would be more easily shared. The poem is the same, of course. But isolated. Held up. Held.”

I hold a card that holds a poem. It is cradled and it is entirely visible. Holding a book, I don’t know what its contents are. It is a repository of secrets, a structure whose rooms can be viewed only one at a time. And holding a computer or other such device? The secrets multiply, and not always according to a good algorithm. But a single page reveals the poem’s single self.




Because poems are stored in two-dimensional space, they can quickly become invisible—especially on a desk that is also home to other, nonpoetical sheets of paper, especially when one has another desk at a day job that occupies most of one’s waking hours, which I do. Maybe this is why the biggest challenge I encounter as a writer is actually sitting down to do it. It is about paying attention. If I could think of the poems as objects, I said to a friend, a visual artist, this past spring, they would take up as much room as objects do in my mind, and then I would need fewer things in my life. Fewer artifacts waiting to become art.

For finished poems, my own or otherwise, this imagined objectivity can be made physical: The medium in which the poem is presented can escort it into the world of things. Over my writing life I have tried this repeatedly. Because I am not first a visual thinker, and yet have a discerning and particular sense of what I like, rendering poems visually is always time-consuming for me. Which medium, what colors, which image, which font? The results are like poems themselves—some better than others, all linked to a particular time. If they are not perfect, they nonetheless exist.