by Tiana Nobile
CLEAVE
Copyright © 2021 Tiana Nobile
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Book design: Kate McMullen
Cover Painting © Eden Some
Editor: Leslie Sainz
Proofreader: Amanda Linnette Rosa, Kendall Owens
Author Photo: Zoe Cuneo
Text: Arno Pro 10.5 / 14
Display: Sommet Slab Regular
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nobile, Tiana, author.
Title: Cleave : poems / Tiana Nobile.
Description: Spartanburg, SC : Hub City Press, 2021.
Summary: “In her debut collection, Tiana Nobile grapples with the history of transnational adoption, both her own from South Korea and the broader, collective experience. In conversation with psychologist Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments and utilizing fragments of a highly personal cache of documents from her own adoption, these poems explore dislocation, familial relationships, and the science of love and attachment.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2020047490
ISBN 9781938235757 (paperback)
ISBN 9781938235764 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.
Classification: LCC PS3614.O23 C58 2021 DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047490
Hub City Press gratefully acknowledges support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amazon Literary Partnership, South Arts, and the South Carolina Arts Commission.
HUB CITY PRESS
200 Ezell Street
Spartanburg, SC 29306
1.864.577.9349
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.
Moon Yeong Shin
/'məTHər/
What orchard are you from?
Abstract
Mother of Letters
St. Rose of Lima
The Night I Dreamed of Water
Where are you really from?
Abstract
Mother of Rock
Did you know
Abstract
Mother of Cloth
Abstract
Child’s Pre-Flight Report
II.
/'mīgrənt/
The Stolen Generation
The Last Straw
Operation Babylift
Fire and Rice
III.
Abstract
Interview with Dr. Harlow
Abstract
Mother of Wood
Abstract
To Whom It May Concern:
/mun/
The Courier
Mother of Wire
‘Lost’ first languages leave permanent mark on the brain, new study reveals
Petals
Father, Harry (Holy Maker)
Underwater Falsetto
/'məŋki/
Personal Fiction
Harlow’s Monkey
Revisionist History
Notes
Acknowledgements
My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
–William Blake, “Infant Sorrow”
I.
MOON YEONG SHIN
Written on the white slip at the bottom
of a polaroid, cut off by the frame:
a name. Many years passed before I learned
surnames come first in Korea. I rode
my bicycle in circles around this reversal.
For years, my skin leaped from shadow to shadow.
I drank the darkness, or the darkness drank me,
but what’s the difference when your veins are full
of haunting? One day I will walk
the narrow streets of many cities full of ice
freshly frozen. I will hike through forests
of wind storms newly risen. I will learn
and forget the names of many trees,
of tea leaves plucked too early in the season.
I will orbit the earth like a moon
searching for its shadow. Where does a moon
find its planet? Or is it the other way
around? To be a recently hatched egg-moon,
curved shell pinned to the sky. I’ve spent my whole
life in orbit of other people’s light, celestial satellite
in ceaseless wane. How much can you learn
from a stranger’s surname? A young animal
crawls its way out of the womb, stretches its legs,
and feels cold for the very first time.
/'MəTHəR/
We tend to our roles like we tend to a fire,
poking the coals with the blazing tip of an iron.
The head of a woman occasionally produces more heads.
The body of a woman is the source of all our breaths.
See Also: The naming of riverbanks.
See Also: Nature’s tendency to cleave.
There is a difference between the qualities
we inherit and the qualities of instinct.
The brain with its many folds looks like it’s squeezing itself.
Its mouths are puckered and waiting to be unlocked with a kiss.
An organ of the body is regarded as the source
of nourishment for the next corresponding organ.
How we feed on each other for ourselves.
How we keep ourselves alive through each other.
You are the living tissue beneath the bark of a cork oak.
You are a ship grained with the grooves of trees.
WHAT ORCHARD ARE YOU FROM?
The juice of the berry, of black, of blue,
of red. You sweep the sweet dripping
off your chin with your tongue. In the folds
of your cheeks, you savor the sap.
Who is to say they know the power of fruit?
That which could not be picked?
They call me peach,
orange soft and tender peel.
They bundle my bones in boxes
and ship them across continents
to be packaged and sold.
Who is to say they weren’t made to poison?
Left out on the counter, my flesh will darken.
Taste the bitter pulp, the slender tendon
where the stem snapped.
What will rot where the skin was bit?
Take me by the jowl,
the stony pit
I keep buried in my mouth.
Do you still feel where they snipped the stalk?
Even my most succulent fruit
will never fully ripen.
Pruned premature, I ache for root.
ABSTRACT
“The surrogate was made from a block of wood, covered with sponge rubber, and sheathed in tan cotton terry cloth. A light bulb behind her radiated heat. The result was a mother, soft, warm, and tender, a mother with infinite patience, a mother available twenty-four hours a day, a mother that never scolded her infant and never struck or bit her baby in anger. …”
–Harry Harlow, “The Nature of Love”
Mother of Ghost
Whether of wire or terrycloth,
there will always be
Mother. Mine was made
of ghost. Every move is
one step away from her.
I try to backtrack, lose myself in maps.
I tell myself, Tread nimbly.
Every step is a newborn
shadow. Bodies
fracturing light.
MOTHER OF LETTERS
For hours my mother hovered over us,
her hand gently guiding mine, her wrist
a helm for my unsteady ship.
I knew how to hold a pencil,
how to grip it between my thumb
and pointer finger, how to lean softly
to avoid a callus. I knew how to form
all my letters perfectly before starting school.
For every birthday, a new notebook
would appear wrapped tightly with a bow.
I would bury my nose inside it
as if the pages would write themselves
with my breath. The pages I’d fill with words
my young tongue was too knotted to express.
ST. ROSE OF LIMA
Lips weary with chapped hallelujahs,
you went to church and learned the power
of patience. You used to sit in the pew
and wonder how long it would take before your tears
would turn to blood, how many prayers
you must memorize to be worthy
of that kind of miracle.
Stained glass windows glowed
multicolored portraits of a woman
in prayer. Rose was your patron saint.
While writing this poem you discover
she’s the protector of florists,
embroiderers, and “people ridiculed
or misunderstood for their piety.”
Your brother’s laughter rings out
from across the kitchen table
all these years later. No one ever asked
why your hair was falling out.
While you pretended not to notice
the bald spot on your scalp, you collected
the strands of hair and fashioned them
into crosses. In school you learned Lima
is a city in South America,
but all you could think about was her forehead
wrapped with spikes, her waist weighed down
by an iron chain. She made her bed with broken glass
and stone. The thought of her locking the door
and burning her hands burned like a looping film
on the inside of your eyelids.
You knelt at the cross and kept your hands
in your pockets, pricking your thumb against
the thorn you found in the garden.
For years, you slept on the floor
of your little sister’s bedroom,
afraid to talk to the darkness alone.
You asked god for a new
mattress. Nightmares shattered you
like mirrors. You turned the lights off
and on and off and on and off and on.
Isn’t this the cost of being alive?
You challenge yourself.
You rock yourself to sleep.
THE NIGHT I DREAMED OF WATER
A man in a boat scoops water
one rounded palm at a time.
His hands are porous. He sticks the tip
of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth
like a turtle. The water rises. It is my father.
He is carrying my elderly aunt across
his shoulders like a yoke.
She is wailing. Her hair is stormy,
but her clothes are matching.
We are in her 93rd Street apartment.
I can smell her skin on the pillowcases.
Flowers are wilting off the wallpaper.
Her silk scarf whirls in the wind. I collect
the parched petals. Curve my hand
like the bent bottom of a boat. Petals leak
through my fingers. The water continues to rise.
There is no boat, just a man
scooping water with his hands.
Front to back. Side to side.
WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?
Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Fertile, Iowa. Uncertain, Texas. Hazard,
Nebraska. Accident, Maryland. Why, Arizona. Hell, Michigan.
Disappointment, Kentucky. Embarrass, Minnesota. Truth Or
Consequences, New Mexico. Nameless, Tennessee. No Name,
Colorado. Nada, Texas. Nothing, Arizona.
ABSTRACT
Mother Without a Face
looks in the mirror. I wonder what creases we share. I wonder how long her hair is. I wonder if she chews on the inside of her mouth until the skin is chafed pulp, if she sucks her teeth when it rains. I wonder if she clings to heat like a monkey to cloth.
My nose capsizes, an upside down question mark. I pull and pull, the line stretched short.
MOTHER OF ROCK
The familiar clack of shoes against tile, click
of the key in the lock. Wait and rock.
Your gaze silent and grim, I long for the touch
that doesn’t come. My tongue caught
on my mouth’s cage
tart with sour milk.
In the picture from your wedding,
a white lace dress. As if held
down by the weight of fancy fabric,
your bones ache to float off the edges
of the frame. Mother of stone, teach
me the temperature
of tomb. Watch me chase my tail.
Toss me a cloth, a bottle of milk.
DID YOU KNOW
my sister was Fed-Exed from Korea?
you say, dazed under the haze of hospital lights,
your arm tethered to an intravenous drip
charging like a box to numbing light.
You’re twenty-five, adrift in anesthetic fog
floating through the white sea of hospital hallways,
and you think of me, the living package
that changed your life. On the day of my arrival,
you were a month away from turning four.
While the buzz of anticipation swirled
around the airport terminal, your small body
perched high, anchored in the crook of our father’s arm.
So this is how babies are born,
you thought, and everything was yellow.
Scuffed linoleum tile. Blur of fluorescent lights
hovering above you. How you must have imagined
my body rattling in the box during transport
as our mother scurried to the airport bathroom
to snap my joints into place.
Today, we laugh about what you said.
We laugh until we forget why we’re laughing.
ABSTRACT
Foster Mother
The first time I belonged to a woman,
my body a fresh bulb broken off
at the root. She kept me for six months,
watched spit bubble from my pursed lips.
I wonder if she ever claimed me,
if she rocked me to sleep on her chest,
if she wiped my mouth gently saying,
There you go, there you are.
MOTHER OF CLOTH
During hurricanes, my body tucked tightly
under blankets and eyes illuminated
by the pale luster of a plastic nightlight,
you drew curly cues along my spine
with your index finger, patted my back
to the beat of rain pounding on the window.
When there’s a storm, it means they’re bowling in heaven.
Claps of thunder are balls tossed
down the lane. Each flash of lightning
means an angel just got a strike.
We would count the seconds between thunder –
one mississippi, two mississippi, three …
and I’d shudder in my sheets, hands clasped in prayer
begging god to hurry up and end the party.
You wrapped my body in cloth,
held my hand until you felt the fingers
loosen and fall. The next time I woke,
I called your name. And you would come.
You always came.
ABSTRACT
Dreams of Motherhood
Wire barbed with fragments of love
or tender cloth that never scolds,
never strikes, never bites?
The mothers I find like copper coins,
heads face up. The ones I collect
because of their tenderness.
The nature of a light radiating heat.
Monkey in the cage, pulling out her hair,
waiting for someone to claim her.
What is the opposite of mother?
CHILD’S PRE-FLIGHT REPORT
Name in Full: Moon, Yeong Shin
Case Number: 87C-2411
Date of Birth: Oct. 22, 1987
Date of Departure: April 2, 1988
Name of Escort: Unknown
Destination: Unknown
Feeding/Eating:
She cries with hunger but knows the bottle.
Sleeping Habit:
When lying on her side, she wraps her arms around her body. She wakes easily to rustling leaves, rain thrumming on roof tiles, and morning birds greeting the dawn.
Toilet Training:
She moves bowels in good form once to twice a day.
Speaking Ability:
She will learn quickly when to bite her tongue. For years, she will hold it tightly, teeth clenched. In her mouth, the bitter taste of a broken bloodline.
Developmental Condition:
She tends to play well even alone but cries if it’s boring. Placed on stomach, she lifts her head about 90 degrees but gets irritated when it’s beyond her ability.
Physical Condition:
6.6 kg., 60 cm at 5 months. Her skin is strong but prone to scarring.
Character:
She is rather composed and mild.
Legal Status:
The baby, … if it is to survive, must clutch at more than a straw.
–Harry Harlow, “The Nature of Love”
