Self Conscious

 

gaze / regard

 

The incident is trivial (it is always trivial) but it will attract to it whatever language I possess. (Barthes)

 

 

She has a seat to herself until the man

gets on and mutters to his kid sit by that

 

ugly girl over there. Stung, she has half

a mind to remind him she has beauty

 

for lunch, or to whisper to the child—

ugly is beauty’s aquifer, mineral silt

 

that feeds the creek bed before it

breaches the marsh. Not antithesis

 

of beauty but its ore, a thing known

not by example—wart, bent-kneed

 

cartwheel, gap after extraction—

but by need—prosthesis, proctor,

 

pore—a need akin to boredom,

to chagrin, the cringe in exposure,

 

the sediment in the cup. She is

uneasy before a camera or a corpse.

 

She hears the grunted “age” in

bandage, salvage, suffrage, spoil.

 

* * *

 

Crush

 

crush / engouement

 

Theatrical phase of infatuation in which the girl hoards signs of recognition and reciprocation, curating artifacts of desire and accruing their significances to herself.

 

 

Instead of a coffin, carve a six-foot pocket knife

with a church key & corkscrew, place

plastic ivy in a vat & paint a lavender man

with one sunken shoulder. Illuminate

 

toaster coils & paper lanterns, mount trout

on a yield sign, upholster a chaise

in faux mink, & dress the mannequin in two

boas & the stole of a beaded deacon.

 

Realign windowpanes horizontally & hang

several bicycles from the ceiling next

to raptors & hinged globes made of license

plates & glass. I should have warned you

 

I have the coldest hands. Set up some tollbooths

& salt licks, frame an old advertisement

for a bitter remedy that is no longer sold & never

worked in the first place, seat a mermaid

 

in a canoe & place a gourd in her prophetic hand.

We work ourselves up to the watery blues,

to the passage in Mauberley, & there’s nothing

to do but get off at the ninth floor. Look,

 

our game goes like this: you adore & I appreciate,

say thank you even, as if I don’t return

the emotion & then some, crushing in both senses.

Keep that in mind & go easy on me.

 

Give dragonfruit to the guy at the cash bar,

summon the tech crew to run puck lights

on a wire, envision a headless nude in tangled roots.

Devise a volcano that spews euphemisms

 

for war. If all else fails, park a Buick between

vessels & spread a pelt on the steel roof,

pick out the constellation you’d imagine if we

were looking up, languid with disdain

 

for the rest of a world we know will never live

up to the wistful ersatz aftermath of this.

 

* * *

 

Ceiling

 

dream / rêver

 

Sleep restores the girl to the domicile of fear.

 

 

I wake up smothering, pinned

in timbers, this time the beams of

 

the Hingham, Mass. meetinghouse

where they would have burned me

 

at the stake. Sometimes it’s girders

of low-end retail, or factory rafters,

 

or the pocked dropped-ceiling above

the berth where I lay naked, hot,

 

a boy’s flank blocking both fan

and light, saying restless prayers

 

to Our Lady of Byways. No use

trying to sleep again before blue

 

seeps through the pitch. And you?

In your otherwhere, are you trying

 

to fall back to sleep, to fall up

through a roof that’s a net, the one

 

you told me about last summer—

sieve for sky, celestial hammock,

 

colander to catch the errors of

the world? What errors—trinket,

 

ladder, dove? What sign, what

web, what sky, what world?

 

* * *

 

Enamor

 

fall / tomber

 

The lover’s discourse, from dis-cursus—originally the action of running. (Barthes)

 

 

She tries to lose herself

on a muddy path where

 

skunk cabbages erupt

from winter mire, birches

 

fill in with green so new

it can’t be natural. A few

 

bars into the third song—

that guileless triangle if

 

that’s what she’s hearing—

she’s startled by sweetness,

 

by some moody business

with a flute from the get-go,

 

the vaguely Spanish guitar

sidling up like the cringe

 

of existing at 17 in skin

too raw to expose to sun.

 

That’s desire—a whistle,

strum, chime (an interior

 

ocean’s rocking, in long

capricious fugues and

 

chorales)—mistywet, slip-

stream, cherrywine—

 

these are the words she’d

pick up to try to skip them

 

across the lake. She runs—

miles later she hears the song

 

again as she’s coming down

the west side of Eagle Hill

 

under ashen granite, and

that’s when she loses track

 

of her body and it feels like flying.

 

* * *

 

Unfinished Fugue

 

you / tu

 

I myself cannot (as an enamored subject) construct my love story to the end: I am its poet (its bard) only for the beginning; the end, like my own death, belongs to others.

 

 

If I were you were waiting there

outside the door in a long coat holding

your breath, holding my breath,

 

if I were you were ruefully amused,

gathering trinkets in the night air,

moons & Mauberley, Burne-Jones’

 

boudoir & Delphinus & crocuses, I

would breathe the night air, observe

the row of stars above the roof, mis-

 

take moonlight for snowcover, snow

for salt, for a dune, a bolt of gauze

drawn across the moon, would know

 

you were (wish you were) asleep in

a white bed, or is it a white field

in Cezanne, shaded sum of colors,

 

as if the eye were I were you were

standing on an iron bridge, were

waiting at the door wearing cold

 

on your coat on your breath on my

hands if I were—there, this, a blaze

of summer straw, in winter’s nick.