LETTER TO MATTHEW OLZMANN FROM A FLYING SAUCER

Listen son, when we shine this tractor beam on you,

you need to hold still. Not that stillness, son,

is something that can be “held,” but that’s your language,

not ours. What we’re saying, son,

is you keep skipping like a stone across a pond and we need

that to stop. What we’re saying, son, is let the light

bring you home. Never mind the way

the tractor beam incinerates all it touches.

We’re pretty certain this is safe. It’s gonna work. Trust us.

There are things in your skull, son,

that do not belong to you, thoughts you can’t explain,

songs you’ve never heard, colors you have no name for.

We’re not saying you’re special, son. We just needed a place

to store our luggage and now we’ve got to extricate

that luggage and we need to extricate it all intact.

Think of the light as all the problems you need to face.

You’re afraid of being alone in the world? You’re afraid

that when the light shines on you, you’re going

to be exposed and everyone will laugh? You’re afraid

that you’ll never be moderately competent? You need

to deal with that, son, and now is your big chance.

We’re saying step into the light, son.

Never mind that you’ve doubted

whether or not the light is real. What is doubt, son,

when you have a chance to be hauled into the sky?

IN THE NEALE, NEAR CONG

The thing is I am not

like a wood pigeon

with a white collar

and gray head that looks to be green,

a tail that wants to be a pheasant

loping from branch to scarred branch.

 

We looked from the road

the kid who became my grandmother

took from church a century ago,

a few kilometers of her eye-level

being on the top of stone walls

and the mountains to the southwest,

Galway, Mayo, out past Cong,

mountain and sea-bucked places.

 

The old place we saw decades ago

had gotten overgrown, with a family

running a terrier kennel

in the habitable half now.

It was noisy. There was a baby in back.

 

The mountains are green folds

of a sofa, whose television viewing

is the sea, wildly carved by it.

The living room is the whole scenario.

 

All day here

looking for cairns

in featureless field

rectangled with stone

after featureless field,

each a different width

or length, from above

not a pattern

but improvisation,

 

it was that crazy feeling

of abstraction,

irritation, sunbaked.

 

I was ready to go all day.

WHEN THE GIRL BECOMES THE BEAR

There’s no terror like the terror

of the sensory-deprivation tank

(because you supply your own terror).

It will not be the men who kill me,

it will be the women

                         who hate the men.

When they cannot kill the bear, they blame

the trees.

I am limb-sawed, uprooted.

A mute stump.

The bear still roams—his eyes shine,

his coat smooth as if freshly groomed.

(By whom?)

In the tank, I blink and blink

                                     into dead air.

I think, If only I could be the bear for them.

Listen,

if you meet a bear

            who whispers, Kill me,

you will know my voice.

The Robert Watson Literary Prize Poem SERTRALINE

Object permanence: something my dog doesn’t think
I possess. She sits on the ball when she no longer wants

to participate. I wish to one day hold that kind of boldness.
Near us, a heron puffs his chest, wades knee-deep into

the marsh. What is more than one heron called? I never learned
that one. A flamboyance of flamingos, watch of nightingales,

bouquet of pheasants. My mother is somewhere, probably
working or maybe driving to the store. She likes to shop the sales.

We used to have the same birthmark, right over our left hip.
Hers: gone. Mine: bleeds. I look for deeper water. The dog likes

to float. Isn’t that how witches were tested in Salem? Something
about floating, something about weighing the same as a duck.

To keep still, I imagine the oil-sheen of a mallard in the dog’s
mouth, my mother’s hand in mine. It’s a siege, a siege of herons.

CROCUSES

 

 For Stuart Dischell

After nearly hacking them down

while mowing my back lawn,

I think of Rimbaud aroused

by their purples and greens

as they spiked between

the stones of the Rue de Buci,

barbarous among the modernity.

The Amon Liner Poetry Award ON SEEING A BEE DRINK HIS NECTAR

Here I sit almost 25 years old,
never knowing how a bee drinks
its nectar til today, having followed one
from geranium petal to geranium petal,
leaning in close, seeing his tiny hands
grab each tiny flower, watching him
extend a shining, black cone
from the center of his face to lap up
the sweet stuff. It’s a dipping tongue,
apparently, which I was calling a
retractable nose, and butterflies
have one too, and I don’t know
how I made it this long never properly looking
at a bee! There should be entire grades
dedicated to this stuff and other grades
set aside for looking up at oak trees from underneath.
My ignorance of the world is oversized
like a shirt. It has sleeves that drag the ground
when I walk. My neighbor tells me
how a mother robin keeps her nest clean—
carrying the young birds’ waste in her
mouth and making deposits in the grass
somewhere. It’s true. My neighbor has watched
this happen, she says, and all at once I love her,
want to marry her impulsively, buy a big house
just for the porch, and spend the rest of our lives
uncovering the daily routines of moths,
listening to the sound spiders make
when they slurp liquefied guts, wondering
what chipmunks dream about, and if they kick
their legs in their sleep like a dog sometimes does.

A SORT OF ART

They made a sort of music with their feet,
a seesaw slapping as they hit the ground
in time with undead, resurrected years—
the monochrome past of sepia suffering.
They made their music ring in children’s ears
all day and night with its staccato beat,
then made the children make another sound,
something like an orchestra for the king
with mami, papá, dios, retch, and wail
for notes. It quivered through the king’s rich heart.
Now they make another music with bones
crushed and sifted through screens, a whispered trill
that sounds like burning notes. A sort of art
of no remains. Not names. Not even stones.

The Robert Watson Literary Prize Poem MISS SAHAR LISTENS TO FAIRUZ SING “THE BEES’ PATH”

If you’re going to go,
if you’re going to scorch this heart
and leave a desert in your absence,
tell me now and I’ll follow the bees.

If you’re going to scorch this heart,
I’ll hem the horizon in solitude.
Tell me now and I’ll follow the bees
inside the anemones scarring the hillside.

I’ll hem the horizon in solitude,
the light lengthening, breaking
inside the anemones scarring the hillside.
I’ll spiral inside the dome of the sky.

The light lengthening, breaking,
this moment gathered around us
as I spiral inside the dome of the sky.
Spring is a ravishment forever dying dying dying.

This moment gathered around us is
honey and wild greens and the promise
of ravishment forever dying dying dying.
We’re just another love song, remembered or forgotten.

Honey and wild greens and the promise
of losing you in the desert of what happens next.
We’re just another love song, remembered or forgotten.
Will you stay until the anemones fold back into the land?

Will you stay until the anemones fold back into the land
or leave a desert in your absence?
Are we just another love song, remembered or forgotten?
Tell me now and I’ll follow the bees.

The Amon Liner Poetry Award APPALOOSA RIDER UNCHAINED

Your horses ride today to set you free.
No longer shall your voices be contained,
Or chained to the watchman’s land without a key.
Here, blades and bows—weapons keep the peace,
Yet who provides shelter beyond the walls of rain?
Your friend will yell your name, then set you free.
Ignite the fires. The song becomes the key.
Unlock yourselves from umber cages, terrains
Of soot no longer bind you. Never lose this key.
Longboats await offshore. Together we
Ford rivers of golden grain. Steady the reins
Of your horses. Let them break away. Let them be
Unafraid. When darkness falls we ride across the plains.
Unbury your family plainsongs from the grave deep
Inside your throat. Sing out the missing key.
Reclaim your ancient speech from amber plains. See
Beaches aflame. History ashen again.
Our friends will yell our names. They set us free.
If your horse breaks away, let them be.

WOMEN WRITERS VISIT THE CAVE OF THE MOUNDS IN WISCONSIN

Too dark to see one’s hand before one’s face
Too dark to see any part of oneself

A silence so final we were afraid to speak,
The five of us accustomed to speaking freely,

Accustomed to shaping language into art,
Jolted mute by our corporeal knowledge,

Now and new, of the grave, crypt, catacomb,
The tomb and time and generations gone

As thoroughly as if they never existed,
Of helplessness before the fact of death,

The pit flat black, the surrounding black as dense
As a dead man’s brain.

The guide turned on a light and we were back
In the world but it was no longer the same world.

It was clear now how foolish were our ambitions
And how necessary to our survival.