take eight minutes and divide by ninety million lonely miles

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

"He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center"

He marries her mites and the wires in her wings,
he marries her yellow glass eyes and black centers,
he marries her near-total head turn, he marries
      the curve of each of her claws, he marries
the information plaque, he marries the extinction
       of this kind of owl, he marries the owl
that she loved in life and the last thought of him
in the thick of her mind
        just one inch away from the bullet, there,
                            he marries the moths
who make holes in the owl, who have eaten the owl
almost all away, he marries the branch of the tree
that she grips, he marries the real-looking moss
and dead leaves, he marries the smell of must
that surrounds her, he marries the strong blue
       stares of children, he marries nasty smudges
of their noses on the glass, he marries the camera
that points at the owl to make sure no one steals her,
so the camera won't object when he breaks the glass
while reciting some vows that he wrote himself,
he screams OWL instead of I'LL and then ALWAYS
LOVE HER, he screams HAVE AND TO HOLD
and takes hold of the owl and wrenches the owl
away from her branch
            and he covers her in kisses and the owl
thinks, "More moths," and at the final hungry kiss,
"That must have been the last big bite, there is no more
of me left to eat and thank God," when he marries
the stuffing out of the owl and hoots as the owl flies out
under his arm, they elope into the darkness of Indiana,
Indiana he screams is their new life and WELCOME.
They live in a tree together now, and the children of
Welcome to Indiana say who even more than usual,
and the children of Welcome to Indiana they wonder
where they belong. Not in Indiana, they say to themselves,
the state of all-consuming love, we cannot belong in Indiana,
       as night falls and the moths appear one by one, hungry.

--Patricia Lockwood


"The Feeling of Needing a Pen"

       Really, like a urine but even more gold,
       I thought of that line and I felt it, even
between two legs I felt it, the legs I wrote
just now, a panic, a run-walk to the private
              room with a picture of a woman
on the door, or else the line was long, too long,
I barged into the men's, and felt stares burning
hard like reading or noon, felt them looking
me up and over, felt them looking me over
and down, and all the while just holding their
pens,
      they do it different oh no they don't,
they do it standing up, they do it at the window,
they do it so secret in a three-hour bath, they do it
      aloud to someone else, their wife is catching
every word and every word is gold. What you eat
      is in it, blackberries for breakfast are in it,
fat atoms of Shakespeare and Hitler are in it.
The sound of water makes me need to: Atlantic,
Pacific, Caspian, Black. I feel it so much because
I am pregnant, I am pregnant with a little self,
                                 all of its self
is that spot on a dog that causes its leg to kick.
It kicked and I felt and I wrote that last line. Even
now it's happening. I eat only asparagus like arrows,
I am famous for my aim. I get almost none on my hands,
almost. Under my feet the streets, under the streets
              the pipes. Inside the pipes a babble sound.

--Patricia Lockwood


"Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It"

Doing what, I don't know, being alive. The green
of her is a scum on the surface, she would like
to look at herself. Should I have a memory?
she wonders. Of nothing washing my frogskin
in muddy water? I do not have that memory.
My near-transparent frogskin? Mother washing
it with mud to keep it visible? I do not have that
memory, almost, almost. Warmblooded though
she knows for a fact, and spontaneously generated
from the sun on stone, and one hundred vertebrae in every
wave of the lake, as one hundred vertebrae in every wave
of her. All of her meat blue rare blue rare, a spot
on her neck that would drive her wild if anyone ever
touched it, and the tip of her tail ends with -ness and
-less. So far all she knows of the alphabet is signs
that say NO SWIMMING.
             So far all she knows is her whereabouts.
Has great HATRED for the parochial, does the liver
of the lake. Would like to go to universe...al...ity?
        She has heard there is a good one in Germany.
They stay up all night drinking some black sludge,
and grow long beards rather than look at them-
selves, and do thought experiments like: if I am not
in Scotland, does Scotland even exist? What do I look
like when no one is looking? She would listen to them
just as hard as she could with the mud-sucking holes
in her head--and they, she thinks, would listen back,
with their ears so regularly described as seashell.
The half of her that is underwater would like to be
under a desk, the head of her that is underwater
would like to be fully immersed.
                                I will be different there,
she thinks, with a powerful wake ahead of me.
When will the thinkers come for me. Visited only 
here by believers. Is so deep-sea-sick of believers.
When will the thinkers come for me here, where
the green stretches out before me, and I am my own
front lawn. The green is a reflective green, a green
in the juicy shadows of leaves--a bosky even green--
a word I will learn to use, and use without self-
consciousness, when at last I go to Germany. I have 
holed myself away from here, sometimes I am not here
at all, and I feel like the nice clean hole in the leaf
               and the magnifying glass above me.
She looks to the believers on the shore. A picture
               it would last longer! shouts Nessie.
Does NOT believe photography can rise to the level
of art, no matter how much rain falls in it, as levels
of the lake they rose to art when Nessie dipped
her body in it. Nessie wants to watch herself doing
it. Doing what, I don't know, being alive. The lake
bought one Nessie and brought her home. She almost
died of loneliness until it gave her a mirror. The lake
could be a mirror, thinks Nessie. Would be perfectly
                                  still if I weren't in it.

--Patricia Lockwood


"Factories Are Everywhere in Poetry Right Now"

We are watching a crayon being made, we are children,
           we are watching the crayon become crayons
and more crayons and thinking how can there be enough
room in America to make what makes it up, we are thinking
all American is a factory by now, the head of it churning out 
       fake oranges, the hand of it churning out glass bottles,
                  the heel of it churning out Lego men.
We are watching lifelike snakes get made, we are watching
lifelike rats get made, we are watching army men get made;
         a whole factory for magic wands, a whole factory
for endless scarves, a whole factory, America, for the making
of the doves, a whole factory, America,
                             for the making of long-eared
rabbits and their love of deep dark holes. We are watching
a marble being made, how does the cat's eye get in the marble
and how does the sight get into that, how does the hand get
on it, how does the hand attach to the child, how does the child
attach to the dirt, and how does the dirt attach to its only name,
America. The name is manufactured here by rows of me in airless
             rooms. Sunlight is accidental, sunlight is runoff
from the lightbulb factory, is ooze on the surface of all our rivers.
Our abandoned factories make empty space and our largest
factory produces distance and its endless conveyor produces miles.
And people in the basement produce our underground. Hillbilly
     teeth are made here, but hillbilly teeth are made everywhere
maybe. The factory that makes us is overseas, and meanwhile we,
America, churn out China, France, Russia, Spain, and our glimpses
of them from across the ocean. Above the factory billowing clouds
       can be seen for miles around. Long line of us never glances up
       from the long line of glimpses we're making, we could make
       those glimpses in the dark, our fingertips could see to do it,
                          all the flashing fish in the Finger Lakes
have extra-plus eyes in America. The last factory, which makes last
lines, makes zippers for sudden reveals: a break in the trees opens
    ziiiip on a view, the last line opens ziiiip on enormous meaning.

--Patricia Lockwood


"The Hornet Mascot Falls in Love"

Piece human, piece hornet, the fury
of both, astonishing abs all over it.
Ripped, just ripped to absolute bits,
his head in the hornet and his head
in the hum, and oh he wants to sting
       her. The air he breathes is filled
with flying cheerleader parts. Splits
flips and splits, and ponytails in orbit,
the calm eye of the panty in the center
of the cartwheel, the word HORNETS
--how?--flying off the white uniform.
Cheerleaders are a whole, are known
to disassemble in the middle of the air
and come back down with different
thighs, necks from other girls, a lean
gold torso of Amber-Ray on a bubbling
bottom half of Brooke. The mouths that
cry GOOD HANDS GOOD HANDS.
The arms he loves that make the basket,
the body he loves that drops neat
                           into them.
Oh the hybrid human and hornet, who
       would aim for pink balloons.
Oh the swarm of Cheerleading Entity,
who with their hivemind understand
him. Rhyme about the hornet, her tongue
in her mouth at the top of her throat! Clap
one girl's hand against another's. Even
              exchange screams in the air.
The pom-poms, fact, are flesh. Hornet
Mascot is hungry, and rubs his abs, where
the hornet meets the man. Wants to eat
       and hurl a honey, in the middle
of the air. (No that is bees I'm thinking of.
Like I ever went to class, when the show
was all outside.) The hornet begins to fly
toward the cheerleaders. "Make me
the point of your pyramid," he breathes.
And they take him up in the air with them
and mix and match his parts with theirs,
and all come down with one gold stripe,
      and come down sharp and stunned,
and lie on the ground a minute, all think-
ing am I dead yet, where am I, did we win.

--Patricia Lockwood


What happens when the body goes slack?
When what anchors us just drifts off toward....
What that is ours will remain intact?

When I was young, my father was lord
Of a small kingdom: a wife, a garden,
Kids for whom his word was Word.

It took years for my view to harden,
To shrink him to human size
And realize the door leading out was open.

I walked through, and my eyes
Swallowed everything, no matter
How it cut. To bleed was my prize:

I was free, nobody's daughter,
Perfecting an easy weightless laughter.
--Tracy K. Smith, from "The Speed of Belief"


Of all the original tribes, the Javan has walked into the dappled green light.
Also the Bali, flicking his tail as the last clouds in the world dissolved at his back.
And the Caspian, with his famous winter mane, has lain down finally for good.
Or so we believe. And so I imagine you must be even more alone now,

The only heat of your kind for miles. A solitary country. At dawn, you listen
Past the birds rutting the trees, past even the fish at their mischief. You listen
The way a woman listens to the apparatus of her body. And it reaches you,
My own wish, like a scent, a rag on the wind. It'll do no good to coax you back

From that heaven of leaves, of cool earth and nothing to fear. How far.
How lush your bed. How heavy your prey. Day arrives. You gorge, sleep,
Wade the stream. Night kneels at your feet like a gypsy glistening with jewels.
You raise your head and the great mouth yawns. You swallow the light.
--Tracy K. Smith, from "The Speed of Belief"


"Keno"
Leroy drove to the casinos to play keno, boring keno.
It had cooled down to the 90s by the time he got there;
he needed to go somewhere and not lie. If he could just keep his
mind on the numbers; not talk to any strangers. Anyway it's no fun

to lie to a stranger--no consequences. Leroy had been lying so
much he couldn't think straight. He'd told one woman her son
smoked weed, every single day, by the river. He'd told a man he'd seen
his wife in her black and white dress at the Red Dog. It was all fibs.
Or was it, as soon as he said it it felt true. Leroy had dark hair

making a peninsular shape down on his forehead; wavy hair;
he wore glasses, though he'd never read a word in his life.

He told everyone Marie was some sort of witch or crazy person--
he meant she too was inventing the world, and they
were in competition. He let her bring her dogs into the store,

every day, and fill a gallon bottle with tap water. He
couldn't help it. He couldn't help helping her. She wore a dark
long skirt, a brown long-sleeved shirt, and a hat, so you
couldn't see how dirty she'd get. Or maybe so you just

couldn't see her--He told someone she was scarred on the front
of her body; that he'd seen the scars above her shirt, lacey and white.
No one believed it of course, but it was true.
--Alice Notley, from Culture of One


What is a lie? I think it's whatever you say about a physical
thing, like yourself.
--Alice Notley, "Ruby" from Culture of One


"Unplanted, I"

The universe drifts inside a mind, like a seed that doesn't think where
to go. Snakebitten, I'm delirious; who will believe me if I survive?
Who believes anything but their own lies? or someone else's,
the universe drifts inside a brain, a tissue of lies, a structure in space formed by eyes,

before I first lied. What am I afraid of? Ruby died. That, and that
nothing will stay still--like in a real world. I'm hovering, turning
above the blue-green river, enraptured by my pain. I always
knew it, the worst would come--what kind of cosmos is that?
I didn't ask to be a liar; I didn't ask to be dignified or not; to realize
the truth or not; to be a decent man or not; to be meaningful to you--
      Who the hell are you?

--Alice Notley, from Culture of One