New Poetries VII

by Michael Schmidt

  Enemies

  Beyond the reach of the body

  – we insist.

  Balance our submission,

  coarse and delicate. Spoil

  the thing to get closer

  to the thing.

  Afterwards

  kneeling. Gentle. Ask

  for the exception, beg to see

  the sight seen only with eyes

  closed.

  Reciprocity

  is a soft animal.

  Attempting to satisfy,

  your boastful display

  of contempt.

  Down the leaves.

  Wet the dry. The way

  takes only a moment.

  We are sharper than words

  and steeper.

  Through Flight

  For a moment

  we are borne into the air

  and then down.

  It is there, behind everything.

  On the corner outside your Wohnung

  where the steps descend

  to meet the train

  you leave,

  it stops.

  What is rawness but an opening?

  The space inside me to which you climb

  and never leave.

  Four hours, ours

  then I begin counting down.

  (What a long journey this life will be

  without you.)

  Meanwhile the train slips through the night

  and we hear nothing. Past the place we inhabited

  on different strata, unseeing.

  Until evening, the air calm

  after a day of enveloping everyone.

  And it’s just us. The stove. The coffee

  has done heating. Smoke

  out of the window. It is us. Just.

  Inertia

  Not lack of movement, but a steadying

  between bodies.

  I wake to find the things I couldn’t say in the dream.

  The space between train and platform

  like the space between this night and the last

  where you wait with ink-stained fingers,

  water-stained mouth.

  Between us, an interval

  that separates now from the canal.

  It’s not the distance

  between here and there

  that is unbridgeable.

  We live this moment across years.

  The pull between planets

  that near but never meet.

  The Difference

  Always a second or two longer than you think.

  Not long, but long

  considering.

  (Because)

  breaths, almost,

  are the seconds after

  when the body comprehends

  what the mind can’t concede.

  Trying to remember

  (something about April)

  those gasps

  Naked except for the jewellery

  You sketched a shelf

  for all your imaginary things. Plants and records.

  Outlines of books that exist only in your future, best life.

  Offered to add something of mine, whatever I liked.

  But I couldn’t think

  of what I cared for. So I said, ‘Jewellery.’

  ‘Sweaters and shoes.’

  When I meant, ‘My bike lock.’

  ‘Procrastination.’

  ‘The lies I told.’

  in

  touching

  the periphery

  excited, finally

  about something beyond the real

  (what happens with the body

  always being like a secret

  we carry within)

  the light of morning draws lines

  hinting at the shapes of things outside

  as in the dream

  where your mother

  is not your mother

  the face not hers

  but breasts

  insinuating

  and tongue

  anticipation grows

  out of everything

  desire burrows outward

  from shadow

  brutal, clean as a mirror

  Rain

  She came at night

  heavy in the dark

  at the window, she looked

  divine.

  Answered,

  I’m whispering.

  Holy

  Holy

  Holy

  whispers.

  Antidotes to the ghosts.

  Pressed against the pane,

  hungry for kisses,

  they offer up your memory.

  This is what it is about.

  Your body in some room and you are no longer there.

  We rush forward.

  Past the edge.

  Not yet.

  We are almost there.

  Luck

  Hard to imagine, two moments

  possible at once.

  Amid the terror, bliss.

  While the rest were made to wade

  blood, we made quiet.

  Swept it through y-

  our visible

  exquisite

  trans-

  lucent veins.

  Tonight,

  as it happens,

  and again tomorrow,

  only different.

  Then we are allowed morning.

  Our hushed breath

  granted / taken.

  Carelessly we have entangled ourselves

  and any unravelling

  will be just that –

  an unsympathetic tug

  and tearing

  and tearing

  and of course

  we know this.

  I don’t know how

  but somehow

  it’s all of this

  stuff,

  here in this bag,

  with all the coins just

  lying there

  at the bottom, exposed.

  I hate change,

  but you are easy in a way I never will be,

  taking a big sip of water as if it were the source

  of your actual

  perfect health.

  It is your body

  that is at your surface,

  you lucky dog; you are exhilarated

  by the things put here

  to sustain you

  and if you were an animal,

  actually, you would be this horse

  we are passing on our way home,

  content with the utter simplicity of this grass

  and this wind

  and soon a firm smoothing with my palm

  of all the hairs

  on the back of your neck.

  I am terrified

  that I am the bird

  that lands on you for a moment

  and when I breathe

  you feel my whole body shaking

  with the effort of being alive.

  I am about you

  in circles

  obsessed

  for that tiny bug

  that specific

  seed

  and you are

  meanwhile

  just there

  capable and magnanimous

  drinking the water as if it were the obvious

  happiness.

  Here it comes now, my

  hundredth

  sip of air

  for your one,

  my bones full of it

  barely there

  but singing

  on the inhale

  Of course, my horse,

  of course.

  Aperture

  Pressed against the glass

  the boys see only the moon

  reflected cold

  bright

  and white.

  It’s the fear that gets closer

  and the hands.

  The itching that makes it the same.

  Virgins white as whales,

  as virgins, raw as f
ilm

  developing under the night sky, slowly.

  We see only fingerprints.

  Our secrets concealed by light

  and our hands sticky

  from the sugar of things.

  LISA KELLY

  The other day I asked my daughter, ‘Can you pass me the thing that opens the door?’ The word key having eluded me. The idea of fluency interests me – and whether we can ever claim fluency in any language. Words and articulacy are power, but words escape me all the time; not only words that I can’t recall or names I’ve forgotten but words I mishear or miss altogether because of my deafness in my left ear. Also, listening to my mother speaking Danish for two weeks every year when my grandparents visited from Copenhagen was fascinating, yet alienating as I couldn’t understand my mother’s tongue. Three members of my family suffered with dementia and journeyed from fluency to the ultimate inarticulacy. To what extent language builds or diminishes identity is a preoccupation. How Danish am I, not speaking Danish? How Deaf am I with my clumsy attempts at British Sign Language? I have to work hard to listen and this requires me to place you to my right side, to watch your lips, to watch your hands, to watch your gestures. How can form not matter? To understand what you say, I must attempt to control our interrelated physical space. Of course, I often fail and confusion, mis-interpretation and annoyance, as well as humour, are by-products. My poems reflect my obsession with form and the physical space that words occupy on the page. Attempting to ‘hang onto’ sound means aids, such as rhyme, are appreciated. Escaping from noise into silence and reading means lines, phrases and fragments from books are often more keenly heard than what is being said to me in everyday life. However, language is as much visual as it is aural. I am excited by the appearance of words, their material quality and the condensed narratives of names. Working as a freelance journalist specialising in technology gives me a level of fluency in esoteric acronyms and a specialist language which masks technophobia. Alternative perceptions offer a relief from the tyranny of pseudo-articulacy. Only politicians’ speeches pretend otherwise. The multiplicity and multifariousness of language, communication and understanding means every interpretation is possible, and possibly wrong. But some fun and perhaps progress towards empathy can be had playing with these ideas along the way.

  Apple Quartet

  I. JAUNE DE METZ

  Repeat If you love me, pop and fly. If you hate me,

  burn and die, and think of your amour as you cast

  a pip in the fire. At my ripe age, I look on wildings

  with a jaundiced eye. Once skin was golden

  like the future. Fortune is a liar. He the scion

  of a rich family, I from strong stock. Such notions

  of choice; in the hearth, a pip scorched desire. No ladders

  to reach an apple hanging like a heart in hock. I grafted,

  kept close to the earth, was nothing to birdsong,

  good breeding in every branch to which pickers

  would flock. My crown not high enough for sheep

  to graze beneath, among village gossip, wisdom of

  soil and season, gatherings to celebrate harvest

  with cider and song. Old apple tree we wassail thee

  superseded by reason. Longing for lanterns, ribbons

  to tie around limbs betrayed by the aphid’s

  white ruff of treason. What auguries in peel

  can the earth descry? If you hate me, burn and die.

  II. THE APPLE MACHINE

  Where worms, roots and fingers

  mesh, the future is buried in an apple

  machine: Redlove sliced

  for ruddy flesh. No dwarfing rootstock

  helped the queen control the apple

  that blessed the bough. A poisoned mind

  finds time to dream. Dwarfs mined mountains

  for rubies – now Malling 9 is paradise

  preserved. We scatter before we plough,

  discard the fruit that isn’t curved

  to mimic the perfect orb of the sun;

  a diamond bite cosmetically preferred

  by queens, kings, everyone. A tooth

  puller in a souk in Marrakesh wields

  pliers to pluck what fireblight

  has undone. Like a princess we sleep

  in the machine’s crèche where worms,

  roots and fingers mesh.

  III. HERE, APPLE TREE

  Here, branches are stark against white

  sky, their bronchial diagram a lesson in

  breath. A snared plastic bag puffs with

  effort to fly free of some small death,

  empty of exotic fruit carried

  from shelves, the carrier holds its own

  trashed shibboleth. Here, custom rots slower

  than our apple selves, rosy at the

  buffet, all you can eat for the price of burst

  buttons, girdles, belts loosening

  at the heart’s abnormal beat to a defibrillation

  rhythm, a wassail haunting the wind

  in clamour for retreat from acres

  of sterilised soil. Half-recalled, If you hate

  me burn and die, blown fireblight,

  an orange sun’s broil. On the out-breath,

  If you love me, pop and fly. Here,

  branches are white against stark sky.

  IV. A IS FOR APPLE

  Abbot’s Early, Ashmead’s Kernel, Autumn Pearmain

  Barchard’s Seedling, Billy Down Pippin, Bloody Butcher

  Cap of Liberty, Carswell’s Honeydew, Cummy Norman

  Doctor Clifford, Dog’s Snout, Duke of Devonshire

  Early Bower, Easter Orange, Eccleston Pippin

  Fair Maid of Taunton, Falstaff, Forest Styre

  George Carpenter, Gillyflower of Gloucester, Gin

  Hall Door, Hangydown, Hope Cottage Seedling

  Improved Woodbine, Irish Peach, Iron Pin

  Jackets and Waistcoats, Jo Jo’s Delight, Jordan’s Weeping

  Keed’s Cottage, Kernel Underleaf, Kingston Black

  Leathercoat Russet, Lemon Queen, Lucombe’s Seedling

  Macfree, Marston Scarlett Wonder, Merton Prolific

  Nancy Jackson, Netherton Late Blower, Neverblight

  Oaken Pippin, Old Cornish Cooker, Onion Redstreak

  Painted Summer Pippin, Palmer’s Rosey, Pam’s Delight

  Quarren Dow, Quarry, Queen Caroline

  Racky Down, Radford Beauty, Rathe Ripe

  Slack-ma-Girdle, Snell’s Glass Apple, Sops-in-Wine

  The Rattler, Tinsely Quince, Tower of Glamis

  Underwood Pippin, Upright French, Upton Pyne

  Vagnon Archer, Valentine, Vallis

  Wardington Seedling, Warrior, Wealthy

  Excel Jonagold, Excelsior, Exeter Cross

  Yarlington Mill, Ye Old Peasgood, Yellow Ingestrie

  Yeovil Sour, Yorkshire Aromatic, Zari.

  Trailing Spouse

  Near the pool, I picked a frangipani blossom.

  By the time I spoke to the maid, its petal edges

  were breakfast-cereal brown.

  Everything is either overripe or sticky –

  mangoes, rice, my thighs. Except the maid.

  A silk dress would slip and pool at her ankles.

  Like the Pomeranian, the baby must be paraded

  every day at least twice on the little patch

  of grass with all the other babies and Pomeranians.

  Work. The Mall. Both are air-conditioned.

  Both colonise time. There are compensations,

  but like the breeze, they are mostly offshore.

  Battling for their place under the ceiling light,

  the moths are migraine-inducing. We drink

  imported wine. She doesn’t want sex.

  Whitewash

  The faded swastika on the side of the barn

  is showing through the latest layer of paint

  and must be painted over by the owner agai
n.

  Our generation is generous it seems.

  Over dinner we discuss how the farmer’s daughter

  was a victim of her beautiful genes,

  no choice but to take the Nazi officer’s seed.

  ‘What would you do?’ The sort of moral dilemma

  sorted over a second bottle, until resentment breeds.

  Your great uncle a prêté serment –

  swore an oath to Pétain – and was préfet

  of Calvados. I translate this to an easy life in Caen.

  I ask if, after the war, he was detained.

  You say, surveillance gardée, (is there a difference?)

  but his possessions and farm were returned.