Sun
in
Days
POEMS
MEGHAN O’ROURKE
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FOR JIM
CONTENTS
Unforced Error
I
Self-Portrait as Myself
Sun in Days
Dread
Mnemonic
Addict Galerie
The Night Where You No Longer Live
Ever
Mistaken Self-Portrait as Persephone in the Desert
Expecting
Miscarriage
Mistaken Self-Portrait as Mother of an Unmade Daughter
At Père Lachaise
Interlude (Posthumous)
II
What It Was Like
Idiopathic Illness
Human-Sized Pain
Poem (Problem)
A Note on Process
III
Some Aspects of Red and Black in Particular
Mistaken Self-Portrait as Demeter in Paris
Poem of Regret for an Old Friend
Mistaken Self-Portrait as Meriwether Lewis
Unnatural Essay
Navesink
The Body in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Mortals
Poem for My Son
The Window at Arles
How to Be
Acknowledgments
Notes
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Sun
in
Days
Unforced Error
Once: those long wet Vermont summers.
No money, nothing to do but read books, swim
in the river with men in their jean shorts,
then play bingo outside the church, celebrating when we won.
Nothing seemed real to me and it was all very alive.
It took that long to learn how wrong I was—
over the rim of the horizon the sun burns.
Heidegger: “Every man is born as many men
and dies as a single one.”
The bones in us still marrowful.
The moon up there, too, an arctic sorrow.
I’m sorry, another Scotch? Some nuts?
I used to think pressing forward was the point of life,
endlessly forward, the snow falling, gaudily falling.
I made a mistake. Now I have a will. It says when I die
let me live. A white shirt, bare legs, bones beneath.
Numbers on a board. A life can be a lucky streak,
or a dry spell, or a happenstance.
Yellow raspberries in July sun, bitter plums, curtains in wind.
I
Self-Portrait as Myself
And now I, Meghan, have grown tired, have come
to the limits of my aesthetic fidelity. It is nearly summer,
and summer seems shorter to me
and winter longer and longer, as if life with
its inevitable accumulation of griefs
shifts time the way the myth said: casting a layer
of snow over all our losses. I want a daughter, but
the daughter I’ll never have I can’t imagine
more than I already have. I’d like to say,
these are the stories my mother read me,
and she is gone, and six decades
pass fast, so much faster than the mind absorbs
all the distorted love it feels for the world,
all the knowledge it accrues and wants to continue
to accrue, and in not being able to imagine her—
Stop. Stop here, and feel the light and the heat through
the window by my desk and remember the fields
I’ve stood in, the prickling of time at my leg,
the propeller planes hymning past, the daughter I lost
by not making her—the RNA, the tethered alleles,
the whorls of her fingers like the twisting
clouds above, the high and possible
voice I’ll never hear except within my secret ears.
Sun in Days
1.
I tried to live that way for a while, among
the trees, the green breeze,
chewing Bubblicious by the edge of the pool
The book open on my chest, a towel
at my back the diving board thwoking,
and leaving never arrivedCut it out
my mother saidmy brother
clowning around with a water gunCut it out.
The planes arrowed into silence, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, always coming
home from summerover the bridge to Brooklyn.
The father stabbed on Orange Street,
the Betamax in the trash,
the Sasha doll the dog chewed up, hollow
plastic arms gaping. Powdered pink lemonade,
tonguing the sweet grainsliquid-thick.
I could stand in that self for years
wondering is it better to
anticipate than to ageImagining
children with three different men,
a great flood that would destroy
your possessionsand free you to wander.
Bathing suits and apples and suntan oil
and a mother bending over you
shadow of her face on yours. It’s gone,
that way, the breeze, the permanent pool.
A father saying “ghost” and the sheets
slipping off the oak tree’s bough.
When I wake, leaves
in the water. You could say green
forever and not be lying.
2.
The pond near the house in Maine
where we lived for one year
to “get away” from the citythe pond
where the skaterson Saturdays came,
red scarvesthrough white snow,
voices drawing near andpulling
away, trees against the clouds. Living
off the land for a while. Too hard
in the end my father said. What did he say?
Forget ityou weren’t listeningHe wore
fishing overalls most days and smelled of guts.
Our shouts slipping, the garbage cans
edging the white scar pond,
so many days like secrets about to be
divulged . . .White snow;
to stink of fish guts butto be trying
to live:the pond near the house
and the sound of voicesdrawing near.
As you aged you got distracted, indebted.
In the hospital around my mother
the machinesbeeped,
the long leads of the heart monitor,
drooping parabolas.
It’s not worth dying forshe said. What
was it she meant? Swollen shells, the desiccated brown
seedpods we used to pinch onto our noses
and skate aboutputting on airs.
Then the books opened
their pages and with our red woolen
scarves flyingand the Freezy Freakies’
once-invisible hearts reddening
into the cold we disappeared.
Evian bottles skitter against the chain-link fence.
It’s gonethat waythe green
planes arrowing into silencegum wrappers
slipping to the ground.
O wild West windbe thou our friend
and blow away the trash.
Salvage us fromthe heap of our making and
Cut it out my mother saidStop worrying
about the future, it doesn’t
belong to us and
we don’t belong to it.
3.
The surface more slippery, slick
and white the ice. I stand at the pond’s edge
gather the informationdarkening there
hello algaehello fish pond
my mind in the depthsgoing.
On the beach I dig, tunnel
to the hands of the woman who stitched
this red shirtdigging all the way to China.
It got so easy toget used to it,
the orchestration of meaning
against the night, life
a tower you could climb on
not a junk heappale picture books
yellowing on the shelves rusting
steel mills on the edge of town. It gets
soI close my eyes
and walk along the hospital hall.
The iris quivering in the March light,
a nurse taking my mother’s pulse
not paid enough to help us
as we wished to be helped.And your hope
left behindturning the pages of magazines,
the models in Prada. As a girl
it was a quest, to feel exploded every second,
Pudding Popsand Vietnam vets
standing on the corner shaking their Styrofoam
cups.Holding her
cup my mother stands, petting the dog,
it’s 1982the sun tunneling inshe drinks her coffee
Cut it out orForget it orHello.
Look, I’ve made a telephone for us.
Put that cup to your ear, and I’ll put it to mine,
and listenI just need to find
one of those Styrofoam cups
and what about youwhere did you
go what kind of night is it there
electric synthetic blackened or burnt.
4.
At night the dead come to you
distorted and bright, like an old print on a light box—
stillhappening in a time we can’t touch.
The hockey game on the blue
TV glowing and slowingI come home
to a man slumped on the couch not-quite-saying
helloall the gone ones there
the slap of skatesall gone
and the commentator it’s going on forever
the blade moving along rink
says What a slap shot what a shot.
You make a life, it is made of days and
days, ordinary and subvocal, not busy
becoming what they could be,dark furlings of
tiny church feelingsmysterious, I mean,
and intricate like that stain-windowed light—
intricate and mysteriousI come home.
We hung out on the Promenade
after school the boys smoking
the security systems in the Center blinkinga disco
party blue red/blue red the East River
below scraped skycornices and clouds
we could hear the cars roaring across it
taste the chemical air of the father’s offices
where we picked them up
for the long weekend in the Catskills
the hum-gray computers, the IBM Selectrics, eleven, twelve,
thirteen, riding the graffiti’d subways,
flirting, the boysgrabbing us callingheyhey
snapping our bras andshame.
At night the bombmushrooming
over the Statue of Liberty, white
blinding everywhere.Oh, my mother said, don’t worry
just a dreamjust a dream
Everyone is scared of Russia
she laughedWe used to
have to hide under our desks!
Forget ityou weren’t listeningI was trying
to tell you something
the maples bare your mother a teenager
Come on the leaves aresliding past the window
riding a horse into her future
into the river where the Catholic kids sailed ice boats
their uncles wiring cash home to Ireland.
The future isn’t here yet, it’s always
arrivingbut I’m holding you,
walking the Promenade, thirty-six, thirty-seven,
the ferry crossing the river again.
5.
And for a whilerain on the dirt road
and the pastured gray horseholding Chex Mix
up to its fuzzed mouthpockets of time
all summereating ghosts in the arcade
Pac-Man alive quarter after quarter
I keep trying—Cut it outshe said and
Forget itI was trying to tell you
my father cooking fish in the kitchen
licking his thumbto turn the page.
In the meantime you try
not to go into a kind of exile—
Oh, you read too many books, says my friend John.
Turn on the TV. And the small voices
of childrenenter the room, they sound
so narrow and light and possible. But
don’t you thinkwe’re always making the same
standing at the car rental
kind of mistake we began by making
at the last minute, rushing to call
our parents before setting off
for vacation.It’s warmer
this August than it has been for decades.
Still the sun bathing us isn’t preposterous
or coldGrace: imagine it
and all the afterworld fathers sleeping
with their hair perfectlycombed
faces mortician-clean
unlike the ones they wore.
In the motel Reagan on TVhis hair
in that parted wavethe milk prices up,
my mother says, inflationher father’s
shipping job gone, the money gone.Key Food
on Montague, the linoleum tiles dirty and cracked,
the dairy case goose-pimpling my skin.
Those tiles are still there.
She is dead nowand so is he.
I know it seems bare to say it
bare tobare linoleum tiles.
You who come after me
I will be underfoot but
Oh, come off it, start again. We all live
amid surfaces andand I
wish I had theStart overCome on thou
Step into the street amidst
the lightly turning trash,
your hair lifting in the windRemember
I have thought of you
the lines of our skates converging
in a future etc., etc., the past
the repository of what can be salvaged, grace
watering the basil
on the windowsill, until
the day comes oflooking back at it all,
like a projectionist at a movie
slipping through the reel, the stripped sound of time—
I tried to live that way for a while
chewing Bubblicious andspitting it out
Only forget it youwere
if I could hear your voiceagainI could pretend
Rise and shine she called in the morning
Rise and shineleaves in the waterintricate and personal
the dying Dutch elms the cool blue
pockets of timegum wrappers underfoot
Sun-In bleaching our hair
the faces they worearcade ghosts dying
and lilacs by the door in Maine
where she leanedclosesaid Smell
the planes buzzeda purple lightfingers
stickyif I could only hear it
againyou could say foreverthe fisherman
the empty millsthe veterans on the corner
tonguing the sweet grains
you could say foreverand not be lying
Dread
My keys jingling beside the honeysuckle
as we walk home from dinner,
our iPhones glittering with emails
calling us to
the things of the world.
The moon wired to the sky
by all the coffee you drank.
Another day, another year.
On our faces, the children we’re becoming,
those orphans—
Mnemonic
I look up, it’s
September and the tree
in the backyard’s
fading, soon enough
it’ll be winter,
embered, crisp-curled
leaves matrixed
on the sidewalk,
a Photoshopped
etching. I can’t tell
the difference anymore. What
have I done with this year of living?
I fretted & fanged,
was a kind of
slang of myself.
Used to know how to live,
now need a mnemonic,
or glass-bottom
boat tour, including
snorkels & a printed
index (angelfish, shark,
love-of-your-life,
home, catastrophe, grave).
Or an apparatus
for funneling the moon’s
milk-light down
on one’s skin.
I see you’re really me,
lifelike but not alive,
an animal in a diorama.
Wake up, you! Bursting
from the painted hawthorn,
unhurtable, unrealized,
that marvelous
thing you never
imagined has arrived.
Addict Galerie
Outside my Paris sublet
the addict paces, flicking
her dentures in and out
of her pink mouth, like
a rose which is not a rose,
and a new rocking horse
stands in the window
of the neighbors I watch.
Mother, father, child,
a son about two or so
with blond flaking hair.
Often they stand
at the corner window
as if at the prow of a ship
and gaze down Vieille du Temple,
talking aimlessly. I want
this, won’t have it.
Something about the way their life looks
from afar, yellow-lamped and
bound by tea and snacks and rocking horses,
the father always working late at his desk.
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