Heliopause

by Heather Christle

  I have left myself out

  though I understand

  come spring

  such grammar tricks

  will no longer work

  Dear Seth

  Yesterday was Thanksgiving

  and for you Hanukkah

  At dinner

  with acquaintances my joke

  about terminal illness did not go over well

  and the small spark I’d hoped to kindle

  in myself went dark

  Of the many

  things I miss about your company

  today most keenly I think

  of us laughing at death

  knowing

  and not minding that death laughs back

  Dear Seth

  I love your long-standing appreciation

  for the Voyager mission

  whose equipment

  is now very old

  When I imagine the adolescent you

  delivering the science fair spiel

  I picture the body as you now

  reproduced

  at a four-fifths scale

  the way they used to paint the child Christ

  before looking more carefully

  at the actual young

  Neil Armstrong died

  the same day Voyager finally reached the limit

  of our solar system

  as you know

  Thanks to him we better see

  how to go about painting the moon

  Dear Seth

  I am still thinking about space

  For a long time they did not know

  if Voyager had crossed the heliopause

  and we lived

  in the strange interim

  of an event perhaps having occurred

  in the uncertainty of something

  having happened

  without knowing what

  It is like wondering which body part

  has begun to kill us

  Chris is very worried

  about his eyes

  his mismatched pupils

  but I think and say they’re probably just fine

  Dear Seth

  Now Chris is visiting you

  in Northampton and the house around

  me exists

  just one room at a time

  Nelson Mandela has died

  The radio

  can think of little else

  You would not believe my pride

  at having shoveled the driveway

  My shame

  when I fail

  to start the fire

  I am actually

  alive inside this mythic air

  a child assigns

  to the time

  before its birth

  Were there a proverb for this week

  it’d go a little like

  He who lives

  inside a snowglobe always drowns

  Dear Seth

  Watching Frances Ha the other night

  I fell into the panic of my old New York life

  with all its drinking

  and so little money

  Representations of debt terrify me more

  than those of sickness

  I would love to draft a chart

  of my heart rate when reading Madame Bovary

  Last night success in building the fire

  and Chris has come home happy

  as I knew

  you would make him

  The first night he ate

  fried chicken and you ordered pork chops

  and these are real plates of food

  that make me feel strong and alive

  If only

  I could think as tenderly of myself

  as I do of you and of my former selves!

  but this is not the case

  and therefore not a part

  of the everything that we still call the world

  like the soot on my hands

  the voice on the air

  or the desk where you sit again today

  Dear Seth

  I was going to say the alphabet

  is perfect but I think I mean sufficient

  which is better

  is enough

  In my sleep I did something to my back

  and here at 5 am I am up

  trying to think

  of a word

  that brings nothing else to mind

  Dear Seth

  We are in the new year now

  hello

  In the last days of the old one

  the doctor told us hard news

  and my mind excluded

  most other thoughts

  so when the idea

  to make that joke about your book came to me

  I was grateful for the visit

  And it’s true that almost nothing is better

  than the movies

  Philomena American Hustle

  or a series is good

  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

  On New Year’s Eve a new test told us

  we’d all probably be okay

  I did not know

  when I began I’d fill these poems

  with so much information

  which saturates

  my life

  Some people see information

  as that which cannot be predicted

  the break

  in the pattern

  It is still snowing

  I’d like to know how this year

  will break me

  Dear Seth

  I have been thinking

  about the department stores

  of our previous century

  how they enchanted us

  with stacks of televisions broadcasting

  novel images of ourselves

  walking through the store

  I would wave and jump

  I’d never heard of nonchalance

  but now there is no place

  that does not see you

  and we have learned to act naturally

  all the time

  It’s not that we forget

  the camera’s there

  It’s that we struggle

  to recall anything else

  Dear Seth

  Chris has a terrible cold

  and is still sleeping

  while I awoke

  stupidly early once again

  I am dissatisfied

  with everything I read

  and therefore with myself

  Today I think I’ll take down

  the pine wreathes

  and garlands

  I will finish up shoveling the drive

  Tomorrow the baby hits the size

  of a banana

  which reminds me

  to buy some for Chris

  (He is crazy for bananas)

  I want them to make him feel well

  Dear Seth

  Last night we tried to go see Her

  but after dinner the snow sent us home

  and here

  before dawn I am up thinking of how much

  you love the Celtics and Moby Dick

  One August we ate

  birthday cake in Herman Melville’s barn

  Your stomach

  is as weak as your heart is steadfast

  Henri Bergson says the comic stems

  from a certain absent-mindedness

  At your house

  when we would watch a game

  I’d amuse myself pretending to forget

  there was a ball

  but your understanding

  travels broader

  and more deeply

  You read the bright screen

  as a whale would read the swells

  Where I see a general blur you see particular shapes

  and this is why the game to you must be called tragic

  It is too early to go find regular paper

  so I am writing this

  on the back of a letter

  from BlueCross
BlueShield

  No action is required on your part

  Poem for Bill Cassidy

  Already I have confessed

  the whole alphabet

  under my own duress

  I came back again to try

  a lamentation

  perhaps to put out

  a match on my wet tongue

  It goes out and I

  do not go with it

  There are marks

  I find hard to erase

  ▴

  But think how grand it would be

  to glide as casual as the sun!

  shining

  light in mild trapezoids along

  the floor or hill

  For that kind of work I’d need

  the most expensive dresses

  Among this and that I also lack money

  So I will occupy myself

  with keeping bees

  or whatever

  Is there a name that makes honey

  I will write it

  I don’t care

  I’ve done worse

  ▴

  Last night apparently a sunset

  I missed

  Instead I received some light instruction

  Imagine pink imagine pink imagine orange

  I can pronounce it

  but I do not understand

  How do you say over

  How do you say again

  They put the sun back

  in the ocean where it’s kept

  ▴

  I will consider this milk

  I mean confess it

  Tell me the funniest thing

  I’ll spit it out

  ▴

  A green thought or a mind of winter

  Had I either one I’d gladly put it out

  I swear I’d plate it!

  But I have only

  this green tongue this wet mouth

  There’s no detaching them

  and look it’s back

  the sun

  ▴

  You know how indigo

  the word

  threatens always to tear off

  into its pieces

  When you die

  that’s the first thing to go

  I am guessing

  You’d have to ask Bill

  Hey Bill

  where you are

  do you see letters

  How long do we wait before we say

  there’s no reply

  given how slowly

  these black words will drift to reach him

  given all this thick light

  given how time

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  The epigraph to this book is taken from the second poem in W. S. Graham’s sequence, “What Is the Language Using Us For?”

  “Disintegration Loop 1.1”

  I wrote this poem over several weeks, waking each morning and playing William Basinski’s video of lower Manhattan, recorded during the last hour of daylight on September 11, 2001. The accompanying music is a “decaying pastoral loop Basinski … recorded in August 2001.” While the music and video played across the room, I sat in a chair with my paper and wrote for the full hour. Or rather, I sat for an hour and wrote when it occurred to me to do so. The poem is full of lines and ideas from friends and books, for whom and which I am very grateful.

  Thank you, Jess Fjeld, for telling me about looping and conflict resolution.

  Thank you, Robert Kaplan, for introducing me to the history of zero.

  Thank you, M. NourbeSe Philip, for creating Zong!, and thank you, Cathy Park Hong, for alerting me to its existence.

  Thank you, Jen Bervin, for catching “loss / loss” in your Nets.

  Thank you, Sylvia Plath, for the “light of the mind, cold and planetary.”

  Thank you, William Carlos Williams, for seeing “the bomb is a flower.”

  Thank you, Wallace Stevens, for placing that jar.

  Thank you, Matvei Yankelevich, for bringing Alexander Vvedensky’s minutes and confusion into English.

  Thank you, Alvin Lucier, for sitting in a room.

  Thank you, Ted Hughes, for remaking Ovid’s tale of Echo and Narcissus.

  Thank you, Anne Sexton, for watching “the lights copying themselves, / all neoned and strobe-hearted.”

  Thank you, William Shakespeare, for “all our yesterdays.”

  Thank you, Dana Inez, for reminding me of the geometric definition of “center.”

  More than anything, thank you, William Basinski, for your music.

  “Vernon Street”

  According to the March 10, 1896, notebook entry of Alexander Graham Bell, the first words to be spoken and understood over the telephone were in fact “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.”

  “Elegy for Neil Armstrong”

  This poem was created by erasing a transcript of communications between mission control, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin during the first moon landing. I found the transcript in Things Working, a book in the Penguin English Project published in 1970 and edited by Penny Blackie. As here, in the original pages the text appeared in white against a black background.

  “How Long Is the Heliopause”

  “We’re so happy our paths have crossed” quotes a box of Nature’s Path Organic Heritage Flakes I bought and then ate.

  “They say it is hard to believe / that when robots are taking pictures // of Titan’s orange ethane lakes / poets still insist on writing about their divorces” refers to one of Christian Bök’s tweets from September 8, 2012. Many of his tweets begin with the word “they.”

  The lines about “The cat who may be alive / or may be dead” are based on my misunderstanding of the philosopher David Lewis’s paper, “How Many Lives Has Schrodinger’s Cat?” as explained to me by the poet-philosopher Larisa Svirsky.

  “Some Glamorous Country”

  The title of this poem borrows from Frank O’Hara’s “Ave Maria.”

  “Keep in Shape”

  This poem refers to a passage in the New Testament (John 8:1–8), in which Jesus writes on the ground of a temple. It is the only story of him writing instead of speaking aloud. The King James translation renders it thus:

  Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

  And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

  And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

  They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

  Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

  This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

  So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

  And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

  “Poem for Bill Cassidy”

  Bill Cassidy was a poet and my friend. He died in 2011.

  “A green thought” belongs to Andrew Marvell.

  The “mind of winter” and the “green tongue” belong to Wallace Stevens.

  ▴

  Thank you to everyone mentioned above, as well as to Michele Christle, Christopher DeWeese, Lisa Olstein, Emily Pettit, and Suzanna Tamminen, for whose careful reading I am grateful.

  Thanks also to the editors of the following journals, where some of these poems first appeared: Barrelhouse, Better, Burnside Review, Colorado Review, Everyday Genius, Fanzine, LIT, Mead, Octopus, and Poetry.

  Thank you to Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Emily Pettit, Guy Pettit, and Dara Wier at Factory Hollow Press, for publishing some of these poems in the chapbook Private Party.

  Thank you to Christopher Louvet at Floating Wolf Quarterly for publishing Dear Seth as an e-chapbook.

  ▪ Hea
ther Christle is the author of three previous poetry collections. She has taught writing at Antioch College, Sarah Lawrence College, Emory University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she received her MFA. A native of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, she now lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she is writing a book about crying.