by Susan Hahn
Clearly Deidre could not find an independent self-path—the one she sought for about a month after the lunch with Cecily. Within a couple of weeks she was already stumbling on it.
After her first book was accepted, a feeling of entitlement and hunger for more attention grew within her like a tumor with an intractable appetite. It has made her spirit bone-thin and continuously famished.
Now, she always dresses in black, never hesitating to tell anyone who will listen, “It’s in memory of Cecilia Slaughter.” Most just roll their eyes when they hear this, silently thinking to themselves, “Oh, please.” After the two published books nothing more will happen for her of a literary nature and she, too, will also begin to wonder if she needs to die so as to become famous.
Sometimes she meets with Cecily at a fancy downtown hotel bar to discuss the merits of artistic suicide and the various possibilities as to how to do it—which tools as Anne Sexton had put it. The two do, in fact, role play, maybe even believe, they are Sexton and Plath competing over the preferred method for a self-inflicted death and like them, they drink too much when they discuss the topic. The waiters watch—ignorant of the literary history the two are trying to recreate—finding them ridiculous, but fun for middle-aged women. They look forward to their return and serving them. They are big tippers.
Deidre, in death, will try to join the Plath-Sexton group—Lowell and Berryman will be there. Needless to say, they will ignore her.
Celine, now left with just too much family pain and loss, has added more men (and women) to her life and more flashy designer clothes to her closet, as well as more of the finest jewelry she can get Aaron and the others to buy her. She has the embalmed look—the stretched pallor—of a too-often-face-lifted bag woman, layered in lots of money. She pays and pays to get what she wants, like her father, and as with him, nothing is ever enough—or ever will be.
The most interesting thought Celine ever had was when she was six and wondered if her baby sister had been accidentally dropped into the wrong family—which she was. Celeste was reborn into another family and renamed Ida after her new mother’s mother. Ida, or Idy, as most people call her, goes through her life with a sometimes cacophonous sound in her head that she cannot place, but with which she has learned to live.
I know the dead cannot influence what happens to the living, but sometimes I cannot help but reflect on the irony of this and wonder—who would not?—if Grandmother Idyth finally took possession of one small thing—the dead baby Celeste, making sure she was given safe passage to another life and a variation of her name. I muse on this, then let it go.
I do not know of the inner workings of everything. I may never. Nor am I sure anyone completely does or should—even Lao Tzu. With this he would agree. Here, it is more about acceptance of what is and what you do thereafter.
As for myself, I have grown tired of the intricacies, intimacies—the interminable detailings—of stories, even my own. I have quit my memory’s mind-search for Wyatt. Suddenly, it became easy, like deciding to uncage a rare bird—free its beauty from my stare—and watch it fly away.
I have little need for things to work out differently than they do. Now, I just look at a situation, see it as it is, without wishing it were otherwise. I am finding that peace that the desperate living and the restless dead long for. Some others here are finding it, too. Who they are or will be, I dwell on less.
However, even here, people do surprise you. Who would have guessed that Great Aunt Eva would suddenly turn toward Adele, see her as her little girl with the dazzling, golden blond curls, her bright young face and dark eyes all sparkle and reach out to her small and lovely and hopeful child.
Eventually my mother passed from her above-the-ground existence and was lowered into the space next to me. I was pleased by the simplicity of her casket—its lack of adornment, its dull finish. I thought it would be ornate, like the one they placed me in, except more so. When I saw it, I was encouraged. Yet, when I turned toward her, she turned away and this is how she has stayed.
I am surprised that I have so little to say about this—a result of the place of peaceful indifference that I am finally able to more fully embrace.
Soon all above-the-ground life intrusions—all fightings, all frettings, all lovings, all hatings, all collectings of material possessions—no matter how luxurious—all gossip, all wrong-spirited hopes, and all convoluted talk will evaporate.
All that will be left, all that will be salvaged, as testimony to the existence of the Slaughter family will be the fragile—and yes—temporal legacy of a few poems.
While they still exist, I hope you will choose to read them.
As I rest.
ceci slaughter
WIDDERSHINS III
Eventually the scars become glitter
on the skin—small stars. The damage
caused by what or who, a journey
into a hidden solar system—night-
mares (spectral horses galloping
through a galaxy of terror). My bed
is placed toward the door under
a crossbeam in the ceiling, crosswise
over the floorboards, in the direction corpses
are carried out—feet first.
The rays of the moon fall across
its sheets—always messed.
Each morning they invite all
spirits to come in and rest.
I would like to sleep now—dream less,
but someone has hung a blackbird’s
right wing on the closet hook
and no matter how I try not
to look at it—I look.
c. slaughter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
(in order of appearance)
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the generous editors of the publications in which the following poems and chapters, or versions of them, appeared:
POEMS
“The Bells XI” is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in The Kenyon Review.
“The Crosses V” is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in New England Review.
“Widdershins I” is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in Boulevard.
“Flowers” is reprinted from Harriet Rubin’s Mother’s Wooden Hand by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1991. This poem was first published in Poetry.
“Widdershins II” was originally published as “Widdershins IV” and is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in Boulevard.
“Trichotillomania” is reprinted from Harriet Rubin’s Mother’s Wooden Hand by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1991. This poem was first published in Shenandoah.
“No Sad Songs Sung Here” was originally published as “Pity Song in Solo Voice Without Accompaniment” and is reprinted from Self/Pity by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2005. This poem was first published in New England Review.
“The Interior Of The Sun” was originally published as “The Interior Of The Sun II” and is reprinted from Mother In Summer by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2002. This poem was first published in The North American Review.
“The Devil’s Legs” is reprinted from Confession by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1997. This poem was first published in Poetry East.
“Yom Kippur Night Dance” was first published in F
ifth Wednesday Journal.
“The Sin-Eater Of The Family” was originally published as “Widdershins VI” and is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in Boulevard.
“Confession” is reprinted from Confession by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1997. This poem was first published in Boulevard.
“Nijinsky’s Dog” is reprinted from Confession by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1997. This poem was first published in The American Poetry Review.
“The Lovers” is reprinted from Confession by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1997. This poem was first published in Poetry.
“Knowledge,” which appears in the chapter, “The Lovers,” is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in The Kenyon Review.
“Mania” is reprinted from Incontinence by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1993. This poem was first published in Prairie Schooner.
“Small Green” is reprinted from Harriet Rubin’s Mother’s Wooden Hand by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1991. This poem was first published in Poetry.
“Mens Rea” is reprinted from Confession by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1997. This poem was first published in American Voice.
“Paranoia” is reprinted from Harriet Rubin’s Mother’s Wooden Hand by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1991.
“The Crosses” was originally published as “The Crosses II” and is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in New England Review.
“The Soul’s Aerial View Of The Burial” is reprinted from Incontinence by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by the University of Chicago Press, 1993.
“Clean” is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in the Atlantic Monthly.
“Widdershins III” was originally published as “Widdershins XII” and is reprinted from The Note She Left by Susan Hahn. Reprinted with permission of author. Published by Northwestern University Press, 2008. This poem was first published in Boulevard.
CHAPTERS
“Trichotillomania,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XLV, Number 3, Summer 2006.
“No Sad Songs Sung Here,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. XLVII, Number 1, Winter 2008.
“The Devil’s Legs,” Boulevard, Vol. 26, Numbers 1 & 2, Fall 2010.
“Yom Kippur Night Dance,” The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXVII, Number 3, Summer 2005.
“Confession,” Boulevard, Vol. 23, Numbers 2 & 3, Spring 2008.
“The Lovers,” The Kenyon Review, Vol. XXX, Number 1, Winter 2008.
“If I Set up the Chairs,” Fifth Wednesday Journal, Issue 7, Fall 2010.
During a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, I had the time to write my first prose, which turned out to be a version of the chapter “Yom Kippur Night Dance,” setting in motion this book’s journey. I am unendingly grateful to the Foundation for the myriad of gifts that productive year of writing brought me.
ALSO BY SUSAN HAHN
POETRY
Harriet Rubin’s Mother’s Wooden Hand
Incontinence
Melancholia, et cetera
Confession
Holiday
Mother in Summer
Self/Pity
The Scarlet Ibis
The Note She Left
PLAYS
Golf
The Scarlet Ibis
