Heliopause
▪ Wesleyan Poetry
Heliopause
HEATHER CHRISTLE
Wesleyan University Press ▸
▾ Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2015 Heather Christle
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed and typeset in Whitman
by Eric M. Brooks
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Christle, Heather, 1980–
[Poems. Selections]
Heliopause / Heather Christle.
pages; cm. — (Wesleyan poetry series)
ISBN 978-0-8195-7529-6 (hardcover) —
ISBN 978-0-8195-7530-2 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3603.H755A6 2015
811'.6 — dc23 2014044266
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration: Aerolith by Andy Gilmore.
▪ for Harriet
What is the language using us for?
It uses us all and in its dark
Of dark actions selections differ.
I am not making a fool of myself
For you. What I am making is
A place for language in my life
Which I want to be a real place
Seeing I have to put up with it
Anyhow.
▴ W. S. Graham
Contents
A Perfect Catastrophe 1
▴
Disintegration Loop 1.1 5
▴
Vernon Street 21
Summer 23
Realistic Flowers 25
I Am Glad of Your Arrival 26
It’s an Empire Out There 27
▴
Elegy for Neil Armstrong 29
▴
And This Too Comes Apart 39
Hatch 41
Such and Such a Time at Such and Such a Palace 42
Me and My Head as Pieces of Wood 43
Flowers Are Also Letters 44
Nature Poem 45
They Are Leaving You a Message 47
Drapes 48
Uncloudy 49
Not Much More Room in the Cemetery 50
As If No Light Could Warm You 51
▴
How Long Is the Heliopause 53
▴
Some Glamorous Country 61
In the Dumps 62
Pursuits 63
Aesthetics of Crying 64
Keep in Shape 65
Optioned 66
Annual 67
Ecumene 68
▴
Dear Seth 69
▴
Poem for Bill Cassidy 87
▴
Notes and Acknowledgments 93
Heliopause
A Perfect Catastrophe
To have stood midfield among the vast and livid green
and never heard the grasses take their vow of silence
is experience, not evidence, and meanwhile clouds descend
and buffer light. When did I arrive? I recall it came on
slowly as a fever as a poem is a communicable please.
What’s in charge here is the scattered light all over
and how it pulls my very blood into my hands
until they graph a fat what the sun likes holding
and some dumb mutter good and nails me to the bone.
Disintegration Loop 1.1
▪ for William Basinski
In seeking to resolve a conflict
between two parties
one can assume
each believes it is acting
in good faith
just as the hopeful
gravel waits for your rough step
▴
The only way to be truly alone
is for there to be nothing
not even myself
▴
In looping you rephrase after listening
to what the person has to say
what the person had to say
and having the new words affirmed
you wait and listen again
▴
Myself the eager magnet
for another to address
▴
Maybe I should think this a spiral
a loop that gets closer
a loop that will not close
▴
To make nothing
draw a circle
around what isn’t there
▴
I found a note I left in the corner
of a part of the poem we rarely used
If you ever feel trapped
it said
this is where to escape
▴
But legally I owe you nothing
I owe you at least that much
▴
Like being haunted by the spirit of the letter
▴
I remember my teacher’s story
of two teenagers who died in a blizzard
trying to stay warm
and the tailpipe
blocked with snow
so I always check
but it still happens
just yesterday
a man’s young son in what the paper
called one awful story
▴
The light switch has a beautiful feeling
when a person reaches out to make it change
and the warm quadrangles of sun
on the carpet are beautiful too
and red berries on the gray bush
and the mail as long as it lasts
and beauty is what beauty does to you
▴
Like trying to say a seagull
inscribing a circle
over what land
the day has thought
to provide
▴
to enter into agreement with yourself
to lie but only out of love
for the verblessness of buildings
They do not rise except once
and then nothing
how being is nothing
and if there were a word after
it would be a slow decay
▴
I will love across any distance
you think this has made to occur
▴
Nothing so ruthless as a life
▴
The day hangs low overhead
and soon enough the new grass will emerge
through the gravel
They have big plans to meet
in the middle
and in so doing
to phase all this out
▴
I go on
say enough and it will blur
off into sound
look up and see that night
has nearly settled in and darkness
and hope that if I look into it
long enough and keep my mouth
quiet
when I look down again I’ll find
a settled word
to which nothing
is attached
▴
Re: the day
someone said
what doesn’t kill you makes it longer
▴
It’s like footsteps toward you
that sound for all the world like
they forever move away
▴<
br />
I keep forgetting I’m the smoke
not the camera
Then I see my dark
joining sky to what’s below
▴
Like watching someone
from across a river
on such a clear day
that you can see her teeth
and at such
a distance
that you can’t hear the sound
so while you know
it must be screaming
it is possible
to imagine her faraway mouth
which you can see but not save
has opened—is open—to sing
▴
After the collapse and before
the dust settles
the darkness billows
and grows
like it’s describing
itself to the sky
this it says
this and much bigger
but the sky
in its sorrow
has had to turn away
▴
to expect praise for the beautiful apology
▴
to imagine something other than again
▴
Whether it is falling
from a ship
or plane or a building
the human body starts its drop
at roughly one rate
▴
The book said legally
thought the captain
of the slave ship Zong
to throw the people overboard
instead of letting them starve
would ensure compensation
for his loss
▴
And another has made
the words to decay
until what remains
is
loss loss
▴
When I go to the video
it is paused close to darkness
the place
where I had last stopped
and as I drag the cursor backward
so it can start again
I’m reversing
into morning what was night
▴
The three buildings in the corner
begin a hypotenuse
the dark clouds
—diligent—complete
▴
The subsection of sympathy cards
labeled words fail me
on which we pen
sorry for your loss
▴
The lights that come on last—
what were they resisting?
Or do they not notice
as sometimes can happen
while the hours carry in
the new-fallen dark
▴
They say we have fallen
a long way
to the cold
and planetary light
▴
They say the bomb is a flower
▴
A body falls much faster
than the night
▴
You will forgive me won’t you
for the lines
I’m copying in
I do not want to be alone here
despite what I have said
▴
And I have forgotten
to mention the music
though it has this whole time
been mentioning me
I will say it is the sound of a clock
which has had all of its hours removed
▴
The screen is dark enough now
that it can perfectly reflect
the facing window
a corner of morning
▴
And some of the lights
they tremble
trying to decide
whether they can go on
▴
Lights like pronouns for the buildings
▴
to remove to go through to withdraw
to slowly walk into another room
▴
What is legally an hour?
The time it takes the king
to fall asleep
the melting
of a candle in the snow
▴
Hour like a jar in Tennessee
▴
And yes I am afraid
to be with minutes
They have completely confused me
▴
The buildings are a sort
of interference
how they stand
and complicate the sky
but nothing interferes
with the hour
it is
as they say
a law
unto itself
▴
Maybe I should say that
I am sitting
in a room
different from
the one you are in now
and I am sitting at a distance
from the screen
so that the hour
goes on
and there is nothing
that I can undo
▴
Every morning the diminishing returns
▴
And now the smoke echoes the roundness
of the one building with a dome
the smoke in love and unable
to do anything more than repeat
the words of another
so after I would sooner be dead
than let you touch me
it cries hopeless
touch me
touch me
and then even that sound
that shape
drifts away
▴
If I could get closer I could see
the river
reflecting back
the buildings’ light
but I am placed here
at this fixed distance
and the lights are fixed there
in the permanently imminent night
▴
I know there are other cities
other hours
where you can watch the lights
copying themselves
all neoned and strobe-hearted
▴
I know all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusky death
▴
Today the reflected window
seems stupid
and too bright
replacing smoke with the pale sky
and the tree
its bare branches
a cracking explosion
no eye could resist
▴
to justify desires with omens
▴
to walk away before the morning ends
▴
I’m counting my life
I’m counting the buildings
one one two
▴
If you are in the center it means
every edge you can imagine
is the very same distance away
▴
If this is my home
If this is my screen
If these are my books
imagined companions
▴
This is the city
I can describe it
black
with power
an electricity
forced into light
Vernon Street
At that time they made
the telephone in order
to say
Come here
I need you
and nothing
has changed except
here now you are
and I
in order in
the order
that’s arranged this child
who passes now
and answers
an unheard question
It means
when your life is bad
you are running down a hill
going
and then the boy screams
Next time I will live
my life in alphabetical order
Come here I need you
There are ways
to settle down
There’s an accidental light
the grass is showing
and my cat
is so sad
that the house right now
divides us
He is in
the window crying
but I am needed outside
where I have
ordered myself
where I half
expect your voice
to turn me over
and up
there the quiet sky the plane
is bringing noise to
above my head and in it
I need to show
you this
Come here come here
Summer
Today you find yourself guilty
as the rim you split
an egg against
You press charges
You spell out your name
like the letters are medals
for good conduct in a bad war
The night moves in with you
into your room
until even your sleep
is not your own
Through the window
the grass tells you
to give up
and you are trying
but on the other hand
things keep you:
the moon, the cars, cars
You undress yourself
more deeply down
like this is the way
to get to the future
You let the darkness
medically examine you
So much can’t be
put back together
To burn the house down
to burn the house up
It’s the same problem
in any direction
You’re matter
You turn on the light
Realistic Flowers
At the dollar store I bought
a bouquet of fake flowers
and what could have been
but somehow (incredibly) wasn’t
It only cost $2 but still
that did not help
I planted
the flowers among actual flowers
b/c what else can you do
I was so happy I could have
torn your head apart
I Am Glad of Your Arrival
Addressing the morning I say
it was good of you to come
as if
it were the sole visitor amidst scandal
when in fact
it has been endless
with the trees and grass and cars
and the cowbell someone’s using
as a wind chime
in the winds
just remnants of the storm
that wouldn’t stay
I have thought
to run away from what I own
Who hasn’t
but what else do I have
Heliopause Page 1
