by Kate Hall
and now it’s in there.
Bruce gets to carry it for a while.
The pear orchard yields beautiful
bottles. But we’ve forgotten to
account for wind. In a storm
the glass breaks. Around the tree,
there’s a ring of shards
we can’t cross over.
HANDS
‘How am I to prove now that “Here’s one hand, and here’s another”? I do not believe I can do it. I should have to prove, for one thing, as Descartes pointed out, that I am not now dreaming.’
– G. E. Moore
Suddenly awake in a dream about bubbles,
in the middle of a calculus equation briefly solved.
Someone built me a ladder. I never asked for one.
But when I miss a rung and the whole thing teeters,
I cling to the structure. Falling will be the worst part.
From time to time, the bubbles I make drift
upward. They take on a certain measure of sophistication.
I replace them with planets. In my zodiac:
isolation, guilt and humiliation.
Here I allow a corrugated cardboard
Saturn to stand for everything I’ll ever suffer.
Saturn will always be the bastard planet,
always — a flashing vacancy sign that is really
a wobbling circular stepping stone in a bankless stream.
Who built this ladder I have to rely on
just so I can conclude that I am perched on it and shaking?
The syllogism causes the argument to fail over and over.
The premises are wrapping paper
on a birthday present I sent to myself. When I get it,
the festivities will have already started.
If the calculus proofs on the chalkboard
could not be erased, I would be happy.
Happy like Moore in his knowing,
when he extended his arms and turned
his palms up, one at a time. With a different accent,
he could have been St. Peter on the windswept rock
dreaming up a house for God but believing
in a shelter of twigs called evidence.
WATER TOWER, 1998–2000
(after Rachel Whiteread)
Where there is a harbour
there is water or at least a place
where water should be. How much
garbage can float around a single
pier? That’s the ocean
where my pants got wet.
I cried. There was a prison.
I saw it from the inside. The ocean
is not so big. Model boats depend on
one’s ability to make water where there is just
a container. Architects build a pond –
concrete – and the ducks use it. The prison
in the field could be mistaken for Disney World.
Except that the turrets look in. Looking out:
guards, the sky leaks! There is art,
unless there is so much missing,
we cannot build a structure around it.
Someone cast the inside of
a water tank in translucent resin and took away
the architecture, so we saw emptiness
filled in clear-solid and there was
nothing to hold it.
MYSELF-IN-ITS-FORM
(after Claes Oldenburg)
I. Soft Bathtub (Model) – Ghost Version, 1966
The emergency dinghy somehow deflated.
When I reached out for
the bathtub it was pliable and my fingers
sank into it and I was digging
my nails into myself and the curved impressions
were symbols. In the morning I seemed so solid
I pulled my orange sweater
over myself. The builders had drafted
the bathtub into the blueprints too casually.
It went in before the walls did. The sheet
over it protected it from dust and took on
the shape of it perfectly. The shadows
moved over the folds as the light changed.
The bathtub was born underneath and began
growing. I was waiting for it to emerge.
I am so sorry I pulled the sheets off,
my love. Nothing stared back at me
and the sheet flitted over it. If there were taps,
they were just flat Xs. If there was a drain,
it was an unstrung instrument. The bathtub
was drapery in hand. The flood came later
and the bathtub yielded and followed the water. What was left
looked like an acrylic bag big enough to zip up
a body. To first have form, then suddenly tumble into
the hole that was present before
any porcelain basin was there.
II. Clothespin, 1976
Daisy, last night I overstepped the boundaries
of this continent I’ve grown a skin
too large for myself to hang in Daisy,
it’s not working Daisy
your freshness hasn’t permeated
the material I’ve shoved the dark in
with the light even the jeans
turned white even the coffee
stain came out in time
for the wedding there’s no chance
of rain there’s no chance
of shrinkage you’re going
to put my dress on the line
with me in it there are grievances
about detergent and bleach and fabric
softener Daisy, you’ll think
this is about one thing and it will be
about many Daisy, the sheets blew away
and covered the garden, say,
say there will be lightning
to split the steel bindings and unmoor
the halves of the structure because what’s there
to hang me is so godly and perfectly
symmetrical and crushing
III. Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle), 1990
there is a bell we do not allow to shrink or ring
we do not take from the silver tree
there is a bell as fruit on handlebars we cannot grasp
there is snow and then there is green and then there is snow again
if just one handhold if only part of a wheel
nowhere to sit comfortably if a skeleton
continues or doesn’t underground
if I said help me fix it if I told you you would
the playground fruit contains iron
as a body is a single handlebar
as a tire is a dark halo half-buried
as the pedals sink further
there is a bell we do not allow to ring the fruit
we do not take from the metal tree
SPEAKING OF ORANGE TREES
I am growing orange trees. Others
are busy growing human ears
on the backs of rats using cells
from a petri dish.
Mine is a flimsy greenhouse
with an aluminum frame
and some foggy plastic
thrown overtop. When I breathe,
the walls rattle but that’s about it.
I throw costume parties
for my orange trees and dress them up
in bark and leaves. Sometimes
I let them wear fruit.
I turn my greenhouse into a monastery.
The trees are happy there.
I stick stars on the ceiling
and hang the moon as a disco ball.
I grew the orange trees
just so I would have something
to kneel in front of.
Searle says searching for similarities is a
useful strategy for comprehending.
But I know nothing about
what’s at the heart
of my orange trees. T
here’s a gap
between us. Who knows
how wide it is? I can’t stop breathing.
These walls won’t stop
heaving and rattling.
THE LOST-AND-FOUND BOX
We are waiting for the claimants to come. You would like to keep the purple umbrella. I would like to keep the orange tree. We’re both hoping no one will claim the blue beat-up dictionary. The dead won’t give anything away. They carefully pick through the big pile of junky objects while we crouch reverently in front of it. A crowd is fighting over the morning star and the evening star, but there’s only one star in the box. It’s stretched thin between them. Fault lines are emerging. People approach from every possible angle. Secretly, we’re hoping for disaster – a chaotic free-for-all so we can make off with as much as our arms can hold. At the door, George Herbert describes an orange tree to the admission clerk. As Herbert glances around, I step in front of it and wave my arms like branches. I feel a little bad because he wants it for God, and I just want it for myself.
LETTER TO MY FATHER
Dad, the birds in the backyard are all squawk and caw. You want me to write: The forest would be a quiet place if only the bird with the prettiest voice sang.
You used to read me a jellyfish poem. The poet was really mad at Hume on account of his theory about existence. That you could only be certain of your own. I was obsessed with it not because of Hume, but because of jellyfish. I’d never seen one before.
At the conservation area you’re always trying to point out the pileated woodpecker. Apparently he’s impossible to miss with his huge red crest. But I have astigmatism. I can’t see a goddamn thing. He’s rap-tap-tapping away. But you’re almost deaf. As birdwatchers we make quite a pair.
At one point, Dad, certain doors in my house blew shut and, although I’m running around trying to keep as many open as possible …
Dad, once you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I hadn’t realized that I had to become something else. I chose the seven-foot-tall bulletproof option. Now I understand that while such things can be useful, they also tend to be freaky. I’m not seven feet tall. But then again, I’ve never been shot.
What do you think Descartes dressed up as for Halloween? Some philosophers think he was a tree branching off in several different directions. Sosa thinks he turned his mind into a building but without any specific location. The floors are supported by their relationship to one another. The foundation supports everything. But where is it?
Truth is, I’m tired of listening to birds with crappy voices. The crows in the strawberry patch for example. The woodpecker is okay. At least he doesn’t try to sing; he just keeps the beat.
I went for a walk in the graveyard. There were all these safety deposit boxes full of ashes. I leaned on them to keep myself upright when it was really windy.
Dad, I haven’t been a homeowner for very long. I don’t know what to do when my foundation is cracking. Who am I supposed to call? What questions am I supposed to ask?
I INVENTED THE BIRDCALL
I invented it with my hands, on the red-eye flight,
by the light of my laptop screen.
I invented chatter then alarm,
quacking krek-krek-krek-krek.
At times I managed only three syllables instead of four.
In the air, everything came in tiny packages,
even the dinner napkin. The man beside me
used his and let it fall to the floor.
It rested there inadvertently bird-shaped.
I made a logical fallacy and felt sorry for it.
So this was life now;
we were no longer grounded.
Mid-flight, I lost a piece of my sight.
It was jagged-edged but not dark inside.
Let the white places represent nothing
except blindness. The world was broken then
and fleeing. I was left with a series of chirps
that were mine but too small to carry anything.
I meant for them to say Help
but when uttered, they meant
something else.
REMIND ME WHAT THE LIGHT IS FOR
Dear occupants of the matchstick forest,
we are getting taller. I lit my friend’s barbecue
by striking a simple idea against
my visible landscape. Occupants,
I know you are thinking
if we left the twigs with leaves
they could grow up to be big enough so
our buses could pass through them.
But this would take time we may
not have. The world
is shrinking as the universe expands,
and remember, it is possible
to set all of it on fire,
then have it seed itself in the ash.
Dear occupants of the moving boxes,
there are days when I forget
you have to live here too, in cardboard
cubes, tossed inside with lamps
that do not work. Everything is labelled but
because we’ve reused the boxes, the objects listed
are not what’s inside. So, occupants, I am losing
faith. The movers are also in motion.
You’ve seen how the basement can flood.
I’ve looked to Saint Thomas, as one would
a plumber. I am motion-sick.
Remind me that I live here, even if
I do not. Let the architecture go.
If the moon must be a pendulum,
let the reflection remain still.
Dear occupants of space and time,
subject to causal laws, I am escaping
through a shattered window,
out to where the stars are, looking in
on myself through myself. It’s so cold.
These are strange gifts. I gave my friend
hypothermia. We were wearing moon suits
tied together on strings tied to
floating objects. I transferred the ice crystals
through this composition. Occupants, the soul
is asking too many questions. It wants
to know if it has a beautiful form. And I do not
know how to answer.
SUSPENDED IN THE SPACE OF REASON:
A SHORT THESIS
‘What I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is my mind.’
– René Descartes
I. Abstract
Bats basically scream
until they hear their voices
echo off bugs and trees. Then they know
where they are and exactly what and how large
the thing is they are hunting. If we had
a precise stopwatch we could tell
how far it is to the other side.
In the middle of the night even my own
breath sounds loud. I’m not an expert
in echolocation so I just open the fridge
and use the little light. Half asleep, I eat
an entire jar of chipotle-lime mustard,
I’m not sure why. According to one health pamphlet,
asking questions is a roadblock
to real communication. Dennett says
we’ll do whatever it takes
to assuage epistemic hunger.
But my findings are inconclusive.
Yesterday I yelled at myself and
nothing came back at all.
II. Introduction
We’ll begin in a vacuum with
artificial tools. We’ll assume the big bang was
the origin of the universe and there was
nothing before it. Nothing will be
a substance on which to suspend years of facts.
A game show will turn into a sparkly thought experiment.
People are running around behind the set but
god knows what they’re doing.
Faced with three i
dentical doors, you choose one.
Goats are hiding behind two doors and there’s a Mercedes
behind the other. Success with reality is the car.
But I will also try to love the stage lights.
And I will try to love the goats when I find them.
The hypothetical host reveals one of the losing doors.
You have to decide whether to change
remaining doors mid-game. The mysteries are in need of
continual rephrasing. After seeing a loss,
change is always a good idea.
III. Literature Review
(a)
The envelope of pills you sent
arrived the same day as the shipment
of elephants and disembodied
voices. Skeptics do not believe
we can prove we are not dreaming,
but they are very grateful for the existence of
anti-psychotics. Exiled on a rock
in the middle of the ocean, this haunting
would cease to be a reality problem and
become a mere disturbance.
Stevens wrote many a sun and even a green queen
into existence. Sometimes I understand I’m just one elephant
in the crate of elephants left on my doorstep.
Stevens was vice-president of the Hartford
Livestock Insurance Company and in his final
days at the hospital he confessed to having
a certain emptiness in his life. Disembodied voices can be
a kindness. Most people would never admit to
having poetic conversations with a dead
insurance broker, yet many have memorized Stevens’ lines.
There have been many philosophical arguments about
