Poemunity — your poem community

Kin Kletso/Yellow House Chaco Canyon, San Juan County, New Mexico Anasazi Ruins, AD 1125-1130 for Henri, at 2 You step down into the Flat World Then ask me to say it, to explain How our name can mean both ancestor And enemy. Your body begins in four directions. Here, one calendar takes eighteen years. I am three. One day is an eyelash. Your body is a segment of prehistoric road, A buried stairwell with only the top stair obvious. We are alluvial, obsidian. Sometimes the ground swells With disappointment; sometimes we know our mountains Will be renamed after foreign saints. We sing nine-hundred-year-old hymns That instruct us in how to sit still For forty-nine years Through a fifty-year drought. We climb down through the hole anyway, And agree to the arrangement.

Where the immemorial and the instant meet, opening and distance appear. Through the opening: a door, crack of light. Behind the door, a kitchen. Where the knife rises and falls, clouds gather, disperse. A lightspeed joining of life and death, cut in two: halves of a sun, of slowness. Halves of a turnip. A mother in the kitchen, a lifetime of cuts. A cabbage cut into mountains and rivers, a fish, cut along its leaping curves, laid on the table still yearning for the pond. Summer’s tofu cut into premonitions of snow. A potato listens to the onion-counterpoint of the knife, dropping petals at its strokes: self and thing, halves of nothing at the center of time. Where gone and here meet, the knife rises, falls. But this mother is not holding a knife. What she has been given is not a knife but a few fallen leaves. The fish leaps over the blade from the sea to the stars. The table is in the sky now, the market has been crammed into the refrigerator, and she cannot open cold time.

I never made a poem, dear friend— I never sat me down, and said, This cunning brain and patient hand Shall fashion something to be read. Men often came to me, and prayed I should indite a fitting verse For fast, or festival, or in Some stately pageant to rehearse. (As if, than Balaam more endowed, I of myself could bless or curse.) Reluctantly I bade them go, Ungladdened by my poet-mite; My heart is not so churlish but Its loves to minister delight. But not a word I breathe is mine To sing, in praise of man or God; My Master calls, at noon or night, I know his whisper and his nod. Yet all my thoyghts to rhythms run, To rhyme, my wisdom and my wit? True, I consume my life in verse, But wouldst thou know how that is writ? 'T is thus—through weary length of days, I bear a thought within my breast That greatens from my growth of soul, And waits, and will not be expressed. It greatens, till its hour has come, Not without pain, it sees the light; 'Twixt smiles and tears I view it o'er, And dare not deem it perfect, quite. These children of my soul I keep Where scarce a mortal man may see, Yet not unconsecrate, dear friend, Baptismal rites they claim of thee.

You swear the twin spirits taught you to write. At night, you climbed the leaves to hear the gods. Catch in the throat. Hollow breath. Paj is not pam is not pab. Blossom is not blanket is not help. Ntug is not ntuj is not ntub. Edge is not sky is not wet. On sheet of bamboo with indigo branch. To txiav is not the txias. To scissor is not the cold. The obsidian mask will make its own sleep, leave behind the silver your body won’t shed. Now you are Niam Ntawv who was once a young farmer scrawling in secret toward the triggering day. When they could take no more, when all that you had was given, you lined your grave with paper.

This timeless blood was here before begat. Infinity runs in your veins— Not mine, nor yours, Nor Eve’s, not Adam’s— Gat of God, And spinning like taffy Godwards back again. Sapped through the centuries to us— Grafting a limb there for the Jesse tree— Remultiplied infinitely, From heart to heart tick-pulsed, Ill clad, ill fed, ill fit— Here, child, do what you can with it. Originally appeared in the July 1968 issue of Poetry magazine.

She raised her head. With hot and glittering eye, ‘I know,’ she said, ‘that I am going to die. Come here, my daughter, while my mind is clear. Let me make plain to you your duty here; My duty once — I never failed to try— But for some reason I am going to die.’ She raised her head, and, while her eyes rolled wild, Poured these instructions on the gasping child: ‘Begin at once — don’t iron sitting down— Wash your potatoes when the fat is brown— Monday, unless it rains — it always pays To get fall sewing done on the right days— A carpet-sweeper and a little broom— Save dishes — wash the summer dining-room With soda — keep the children out of doors— The starch is out — beeswax on all the floors— If girls are treated like your friends they stay— They stay, and treat you like their friends — the way To make home happy is to keep a jar — And save the prettiest pieces for the star In the middle — blue’s too dark — all silk is best— And don’t forget the corners — when they’re dressed Put them on ice — and always wash the chest Three times a day, the windows every week— We need more flour — the bedroom ceilings leak— It’s better than onion — keep the boys at home— Gardening is good — a load, three loads of loam— They bloom in spring — and smile, smile always, dear— Be brave, keep on — I hope I’ve made it clear.’ She died, as all her mothers died before. Her daughter died in turn, and made one more.

This is everything she ever closed a door on, the broom closet of childhood where no one could ever find a broom. Here, layer upon layer, nothing breathes: photo albums curl at the edges, books she brought home from the library where she worked, handled by thousands of other hands before their final exile where they’ve waited, paper and more paper taking in the ocean air, about to sprout. Mother’s sitting on the bed with her tattered list of dispersals—who gets what among the treasures she hopes I’ll find, but I know I’m seeing what she doesn't want me to see, the daughter cleaning doing what the son would never do. After an hour of excavation the console TV emerges from beneath forgotten sweaters and balled up nylons saved for stuffing puppets, a long ago church project— the TV arrived in 1966 same day I crushed the fender of the car, upsetting the careful plans she’d made for payment. She wants to leave so much behind. Hours later I’ve found nothing I want but the purple mache mask I made in the fourth grade. I like its yellow eyes. She looks at each magazine I remove, saving every word about my brother, the coach. He’s sixty and a long dead mouse has eaten the laces of his baby shoes. I want order. I say I’m old myself, I’ve started throwing things away. I’m lying. I’ve kept everything she’s ever given me.

I passed through the narrow hills of my mother's hips one cold morning and never looked back, until now, clipping her tough toenails, sitting on the bed's edge combing out the tuft of hair at the crown where it ratted up while she slept, her thumbs locked into her fists, a gesture as old as she is, her blanched knees fallen together beneath a blue nightgown. The stroke took whole pages of words, random years torn from the calendar, the names of roses leaning over her driveway: Cadenza, Great Western, American Beauty. She can't think, can't drink her morning tea, do her crossword puzzle in ink. She's afraid of everything, the sound of the front door opening, light falling through the blinds— pulls her legs up so the bright bars won't touch her feet. I help her with the buttons on her sweater. She looks hard at me and says the word sleeve. Exactly, I tell her and her face relaxes for the first time in days. I lie down next to her on the flowered sheets and tell her a story about the day she was born, head first into a hard world: the Great Depression, shanties, Hoovervilles, railroads and unions. I tell her about Amelia Earhart and she asks Air? and points to the ceiling. Asks Heart? and points to her chest. Yes, I say. I sing Cole Porter songs.Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? When I recite lines from Gone with the Wind she sits up and says Potatoes! and I say, Right again. I read her Sandburg, some Frost, and she closes her eyes. I say yes, yes, and tuck her in. It's summer. She's tired. No one knows where she's been.

"the shows here all fights are prepared by women" evening at the bar below only four ninety nine that's cheap as we walk to our room a hundred feet away Id taken photo with a shirtless Pac about to warm up for his battle with Bisping anything goes I say to Bisping "he will mishmash your face" working behind Atul's lead & one other's later inside room give Taija a huge hug I think it must have been Arun's room or another minimalist orange variation book by Casey Anthony feel or leave bleeding through margins a French door to let cooling breeze certain sway crystal night I could swear more people Im familiar with & trust present it has to be Mama whom I correspond with or new letter I read cry out name of anyone close to me in their strangle house whose owner Ive made my acquaintance name English evening in this outer sphere when alone you feel the cloth down your back like the cosmos always admire the poet or comics able to bring bone essence unwrit till name language happen get leaves behind in open living space where owner by family wife with this book in orange flower "Beautiful!"

Dying only mother’s hands continue undying, blading into air, impersonal, forced, curving it down — drought incessant rain revolution and the organs shutting down but not these extremities, here since I first opened my first eyes first day and there they were, delicate, pointing, will not back off, cannot be remembered. Mother, dying — mother not wanting to die — mother scared awakening each night thinking she’s dead — crying out — mother not remembering who I am as I run in — who am I — mother we must take away the phone because who will you call next — now saying I dreamt I have to get this dress on, if I get this dress on I will not die — mother who cannot get the dress on because of broken hip and broken arm and tubes and coils and pan and everywhere pain, wandering delirium, in the fetid shadow- world — geotrauma — trans- natural — what is this message you have been scribbling all your life to me, what is this you drag again today into non-being. Draw it. The me who is not here. Who is the ghost in this room. What am I that is now drawn. Where are we heading. Into what do you throw me with your quick eye — up onto me then down onto the blank of the page. You rip the face off. I see my elbow there where now you bend it with the pen, you fill it in, you slough it off me onto more just-now making of more future. You look back up, you take my strangeness from me, you machine me, you hatch me in. To make what, mother, here in this eternity this second this million years where I watch as each thing is seen and cancelled-out and re- produced — multiplying aspects of light in the morning air — the fingers dipping frantic into the bag of pens, pencils, then here they are — the images — and the hands move — they are making a line now, it is our world, it horizons, we ghost, we sleepwalk, everything around us is leveled, canceled, we background, we are barely remains, we remain, but for what, the fingers are deepening curling, bringing it round, the mind does not — I don’t think — know this but the fingers, oh, for all my life scribbling open the unseen, done with mere things, not interested in appraisal, just seizure — what is meant by seizure — all energy, business- serious, about direction, tracing things that dissolve from thingness into in-betweens — here firm lines, here powdery lift off — hunger, fear — the study begins — all is not lost — the thought a few seconds wide — the perusal having gone from here to here, aggregates, thicket, this spot could be where we came in, or where we are saved, could be a mistake, looks across room through me, me not here then, me trying to rise in the beam, nothing I do will make it happen, rock-face, work that excludes everything that is not itself, all urge in the process of becoming all effect, how can I touch that hand like snow moving, when is it time again as here there is no time, or time has been loaded but not cocked, so is held in reserve, all wound up, I was also made but not like this, I look for reluctance, expectation, but those are not the temperatures — if only I could be in the scene — my time is not passing — whose is the time that is passing — the hands rushing across the paper, cloudy with a sun outside also rushing scribbling — wisdom turning itself away from wisdom to be — what — a thing that would gold-up but cannot, a patch of blue outside suddenly like the cessation of language when lips cease to move — sun — self- pronouncing — I want this to not be my writing of it, want my hands not to be here also, mingling with hers who will not take my hand ever into hers, no matter how late we are, no matter that we have to run so fast through all these people and I need the hand, somewhere a radiant clearing, are we heading for it, head down towards the wide page, hand full of high feeling, cannot tell if it takes or gives, cannot tell what it is that is generating the line, it comes from the long fingers but is not them, all is being spent, the feeling that all — all that we need or have — would be spent for this next thing this capture, actually loud though all you can hear is the small scratching, and I feel dusk approaching though it is still early afternoon, just slipping, no one here to see this but me, told loud in silence by arcs, contours, swell of wind, billowing, fluent — ink chalk charcoal — sweeps, spirals, the river that goes nowhere, that has survived the astonishments and will never venture close to that heat again, is cool here, looking up at what, looking back down, how is it possible the world still exists, as it begins to take form there, in the not being, there is once then there is the big vocabulary, loosed, like a jay’s song thrown down when the bird goes away, cold mornings, hauling dawn away with it, leaving grackle and crow in sun — they have known what to find in the unmade undrawn unseen unmarked and dragged it into here — that it be visible.