by Nathan Hoks
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE NARROW CIRCLE
NATHAN HOKS is the author of Reveilles. He lives with his family in Chicago, where he teaches at Columbia College and runs Convulsive Editions.
THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES
The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation; Stephen Graham; Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation; Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds; the Poetry Foundation; and Olafur Olafsson.
2012 COMPETITION WINNERS
the meatgirl whatever, by Kristin Hatch of San Francisco, CA
Chosen by K. Silem Mohammad, to be published by Fence Books
The Narrow Circle, by Nathan Hoks of Chicago, IL
Chosen by Dean Young, to be published by Penguin Books
The Cloud That Contained the Lightning, by Cynthia Lowen of Brooklyn, NY
Chosen by Nikky Finney, to be published by University of Georgia Press
Visiting Hours at the Color Line, by Ed Pavlić of Athens, GA
Chosen by Dan Beachy-Quick, to be published by Milkweed Editions
Failure and I Bury the Body, by Sasha West of Austin, TX
Chosen by D. Nurkse, to be published by HarperCollins Publishers
THE
NARROW CIRCLE
NATHAN HOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 2013
Copyright © Nathan Hoks, 2013
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Image credits appear here.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hoks, Nathan.
[Poems. Selections]
The narrow circle / Nathan Hoks.
pages ; cm.—(National poetry series)
ISBN 978-0-14-312373-6
I. Title.
PS3608.O48285N37 2013
811’.6—dc23
2013006561
For Teddy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the editors of the following venues in which some of these poems first appeared, often in different versions: Boston Review; Colorado Review; Crazyhorse; Forklift, Ohio; H_ngm_n; jubilat; The New Megaphone; Poem, Home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica; SCUD.
“Infinite Interior” appeared on a broadside for the Pop Mirror-Shaped Reading in Madison, Wisconsin. Thank you to Lewis Freedman and Andy Gricevich.
Thank you to my family for their tolerance and encouragement, and thank you to everyone whose spirit and intelligence helped along these poems, especially Nikki Flores, James Shea, Chad Chmielowicz, Chris Hund, Joel Craig, Joseph Bienvenu, Jorge Sánchez, Vieve Kaplan, Leora Fridman, Catherine Theis, Jill Magi, Maureen Ewing, Larry Sawyer, Michael Anichini, Eugene Sampson, Sarah Green, Jared Stanley, and Kate Hollander. Thank you also to Paul Slovak at Penguin and Stephanie Stio at the National Poetry Series.
CONTENTS
About the Author
About the National Poetry Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
THE INTERIOR
Flight to the Interior
Shadow of the Interior
Birth of the Interior
Operation White Out
Personality Test
Invisible Barrier Syndrome
Chair of the Interior
Robot of the Interior
The Reality of the Interior
Charles Dickens of the Interior
Mouth of the Interior
Birds of the Interior
People of the Interior
Spiral of the Interior
Infinite Interior
Lily of the Interior
Family of the Interior
Film of the Interior
Institution of the Interior
God of the Interior
Farewell, Interior
Hôtel l’Intérieur
THE EXTERIOR
Sandwich of the Exterior
Family of the Exterior
Winter of the Exterior
Message of the Exterior
Building the Sandbox of the Exterior
Outline of the Exterior (The Sun)
Candelabra
The Architect and the Hat
Spores of the Exterior
Marigold of the Exterior
Barometer of the Exterior
Twitch of the Exterior
Sky of the Exterior
Mouth of the Exterior
Anatomy of the Exterior
Steam of the Exterior
Edge of the Exterior
Animal of the Exterior
Apple Tree of the Exterior
Heart of the Exterior
Letter of the Exterior
Mind of the Exterior
Image Credits
They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.
And they inclos’d my infinite brain into a narrow circle,
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red round globe hot burning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.
—WILLIAM BLAKE
THE
INTERIOR
FLIGHT TO THE INTERIOR
I’ve got secrets I’m about to leave in the river
And it makes me feel homeless to stand here
Having to think them through.
Silence yourself, says the tree line—
You are miniature, absorbing
Time on your way to the end of the tunnel.
You are about to enter an orange plain
And the sound in your head will be
A car starting in the rain. You will fill yourself
With pockets. You will file your nails
Until the heart of your ghost fills with glowing juice.
Finally you feel fully washed of your self,
Blown into several pieces of sky, transparent
But also a bloblike raindrop.
For the rest of the day you will glue
Blue and green squares to the tree trunks.
Every rotting leaf is a form of speculation
You have inherited from the raindrop.
When the shadow splatters, the thing itself splatters.
All of us become the river.
SHADOW OF THE INTERIOR
My friend Michael always carries
His chair from house to house.
He calls this chair his heart, his warm
Beeping heart that he cannot shake
From his hands no matter how hard
He shakes them. Imagine, he says,
Imagine having t
o look at your inner life
Always in your hands, always pointing
The direction from place to place
Until you cannot stand it. One day
You are in a desert where there is
Simply no context for your feelings.
A rhythm rattles your head.
Light sneaks quickly into your eyes
And you cannot tell yourself from sky.
You need a place to lie down, a place
To bore into. You will be happy to
Have your chair. You will clutch its
Thin legs and think about the moon.
A little bit of rock and mud under your
Feet reminds you there was a lake here once.
Lucky you. You see everything inside out.
BIRTH OF THE INTERIOR
The oysters I did not eat are in the fridge
Dreaming of the ocean they did not mean
To leave. They came here on an
Airplane, in many ways like my wife
Who is washing her face in the bathroom
That makes your face feel like it is
Shrinking so you try to get out. If you stand
Up too fast you feel blood running
Circles in your head, tightening the skin around
Your nose and cheekbones. Perhaps your hair
Grows a little. In the mirror you don’t
Notice major changes but you feel
Something large poking its soft head
Through your chest. You are excited
For the new installment. You run to
Tell your friends to get out their cameras.
They have never heard of cameras. You
Walk across the couch to the window
Where the raindrops have settled
Into a little pool on the sill. You are
Half of everything you see. The indiscretion
Pulverizes your insides. You have to wear
A shiny fur hat to cover up the pieces.
OPERATION WHITE OUT
My friend John is always carrying on
About the laundry detergent. His neighbors
Have built tall fences. When he walks
Into a party the host turns up the music.
I try to cheer him up, invite him over
For jelly donuts. His sullen face bothers
My dogs. His bloodshot eyes seem to drip
On their egg-white fur. I try to distract him
By sharing my theory that over the years
The sky’s shade of blue has been
Gradually lightening so that soon
The sky will be white all the time.
You won’t want to bleach your undershirts.
You won’t care about the enzymes,
How they work away at the marinara
On your cloth napkin. And the lake
Of soluble phosphates will fill with
Algal blooms and kill the fish and plants.
The same green spot is growing inside me.
PERSONALITY TEST
Everyone tells me I look like Jim.
Jim, I say, who the hell is Jim? In truth
I know him, but I’m feeling anxious
About these accusations. I have to flip
Through a stack of magazines just to
Work up the courage to go to bed. And
When I awake I’m not certain I’m in
The right room. My fear is assuaged
When I see Jim’s portrait hanging
Over the dresser. I reach for the feathers
I keep on the nightstand. Their silky
Texture teases my insides, begs them
To come out. Another tissue wriggles
And glides its cursive across the wall.
If I were to close the curtain more dust
Would appear around the rim
Of my water glass. I can’t drink any more.
My insides will be washed away.
Finally you feel fully washed of your self
Lucky you, you see everything inside out
Tell your friends to get out their cameras
My insides will be washed away
INVISIBLE BARRIER SYNDROME
All the good baby names have been taken
Says my wife who refuses to have a child
But can’t stop playing with the stuffed zebra
That lives in the box beside our couch.
The shadows brush by her face as if refusing
To let her pass. But a baby does not need
A name and I can imagine it on a large wheel
Rolling through the door. A man in overalls
Will probably be behind it with his cell
Phone going off and a pigeon feather in
His ear, which will make us cringe, but we’ll
Be cool, we’ll play along. We’ll pull out the couch
And add a picture of a truck to the wall.
No one but babies believes in walls
But there they are and we cannot avoid
Walking around them. Walls in my house,
Walls on the street. When there are enough
Walls my wife and I stand in the middle and call it
The inside. A leaf is growing out of our face.
CHAIR OF THE INTERIOR
The chair is my hombre, my shadow, my humming stone and curvature. It says yes and I dress it in tissues, supple to its nicks and gashes. I meant to save it from fissures, from virtue, from nature. My hombre, mi amor, I can’t remember life without you. Did I have one? One perhaps, under a brackish master, all queasy and nebulous, supine and lost in transmutation so as to permeate the bread, even the bread subsumed by lifeless vapors. The sky is a kind of bread, all-permeable, blue amigo, a package to unpack at a rocky summit. Hombre chair, hermano sky, they become one, they hoist me, the air thins, and from this angle I see a panther hunting mules. And though it pains me, I stop myself from stopping it.
ROBOT OF THE INTERIOR
My robot is a challenged acquaintance. He wears blue in the morning, dreams of cigars, speaks often of the azure. To him people are pink and pukish and dull and distrustful. When we look at each other we squint and say “soup,” or “s’up?” Though we never shake hands and absolutely refuse to call each other by name. I’ve been asking him to keep a diary or paint a picture. I try to explain the ecosystem but he only hears a squirting sound. “Are you unhappy?” he asks, and although I know he means it, I can only point to the ceiling and smile.
THE REALITY OF THE INTERIOR
is a flower turning toward the sun on a day there is no sun. I drink a lot of water and try to sit still. My insides jiggle a little—just enough to make me ill. I look outside: still no sun. Even after the rain, nothing. When my wife comes home, I close the shades and go to bed. When I wake up, a speckled flower is peering through the window.
CHARLES DICKENS OF THE INTERIOR
It was midnight when I heard the voice on the radio. Ice must have been turning into water on the roof for I could also hear a painful groaning coming from above. Inside there was painful groaning too—maybe that’s an exaggeration though I feel to a certain extent that painful groaning is a characteristic state of being inside. Perhaps this stems from the winter when we kept the heat too high and I was always waking up in the middle of the night soaked in sweat so we’d have to change the sheets before getting back to sleep. I was reading a novel by Charles Dickens, I don’t remember which, and it occurred to me that reading itself is a kind of sleep. The text and the heart rate work in chorus. An image flashes through the head. Charles Dickens Charles Dickens. His voice was never on the radio but I hear it now and then and it does not give me shivers which you’d expect of a ghost
’s voice. London fog. That is his voice. And the purple interior of this bedroom. That is his voice too.
MOUTH OF THE INTERIOR
When I hold a spatula
To the lighted lightbulb, the silhouette
Zooms away. The silhouette burns
A mouth inside the mouth. The mouth
Burns an engine in the silhouette.
With this mouth you might say:
Silhouette yourself. With this mouth
You might make other mouths.
You might spend four days kissing.
You might sing and eat at the same time.
This mouth does not fear
The street sweepers, the meter maids,
The parking attendants who piece
Quilts out of left-behind seatbelts.
With this mouth a bird rises and flares out,
The wind swims by like seaweeds,
An electrical charge and the wind
And a lantern around your neck.
Mouth around your neck.
Neck around your neck.
The silhouette comes back like a cape.
Mouth eats poem. Falls from rafters.
Lightbulb beside the house, house up in flames.
The same green spot is growing inside me
My hombre, mi amor
It does not give me the shivers
A mouth inside the mouth
BIRDS OF THE INTERIOR
On the side street of my heart
In the control room of my silence
In the landfill of my shadow
In the happenstance of the silo
In the spirit of my laundry room
In the water tower of my life
Below the watchtower of my social life
In the fuse box of my empathy
In the fuselage of my ire
Around the archipelago of my apathy
