Patterns of the blast
Ball, Harjo, Kapil, Parsons, Dhompa, Smith, Dickinson
“Bell the Cat” by Jesse Ball
“I can understand why people would give up their lives for the moon. There really isn’t anything like it, even if people will tell you that the other planets have their own moons, even moons that have their own moons, etc. In my particular predicament there is a thing called the moon, and whatever it is that would be analogous to the moon in someone else’s world, well, so be it. We meet down below, in the street, which of course is empty since there aren’t any cars anymore, with garbage blowing here and there. And it’s dark, real dark, and when we go through the front door of the house it’s even darker. Up the creaking stairs to the top floor, then up another staircase to the attic. And then out a hole we busted int he side of the roof, and there it is, flat as a plate, indomitable, patient: the moon, as if it’s been waiting for us for a thousand years, or a week. The moon is made of hours, but wants no part of it. Friendly moon. People say it’s at the heart of all disasters, like a patron saint, like a heresy.”
She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo
“Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.”
Incubation: A Space for Monsters by Bhanu Kapil
“I walked towards the sound of something roaring in a day, the kind of day that is like darkness but lit up, on its forested, proximal verge by gorse, which is a bright yellow flower. Citron-yellow and a kind of tin or silver roofing with holes in it. The day. Like walking in a dreamed landscape drenched with the wrong rain. Monsoon. What kind of rain is this? I recognized the immensity but not the temperature. This was monstrous: the inability to assimilate, on the level of the senses, an ordinary experience of weather. Here is the tongue, for example, constantly darting out to feel the air: what is it? Is it summer? Is it a different season? It’s a different day. That’s okay. Damaged from her travels, in some sense unsettled, enormously anxious, a girl does it anyway: gets up and goes. It’s as if the day has a memory of her and not the other way around.”
Collected Works by Clere Parsons
“Some melody of words continues on
Over and above the words in which I think
And which the outer being is based on
If once within the bounds of meaning it came
I might enclose within a verbal system
This opulent lovely tongue that has no name
No rules of grammar, no place for adverb
No active and passive, no paradigm
Not even the primal and primordial verb
It is the original rhythm whence speech sprung
The dog feels too before the fire which burns
These crazy flames his deft thought leaps among.”
My Rice Tastes Like the Lake by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa
“If I remain still
I may collapse bearing
my own. To spend so much
time in thought and recall
spottily—where does it go?
With numbers I come
to expect precision.
To be whole or irrational
is determined: I am
not a horse. One’s locus allows
for sun within which the terms,
bounty and fallow, are applied.
It takes time, I think, to be
happy. The leaves, still quavering,
what happens if they stop?”
Spill by Bruce Smith
“I walked in the romantic garden and I walked
in the garden of ruin. I walked in the green-skinned,
black-skinned garden of Osiris who was ripped to pieces
and reformed and adored. I walked in that wet,
incestuous plot. Am I the only one who reads
for art? I walked in the garden of Amadou Diallo
whose shadow was punctured by unnumbered shafts
of light leading from West Africa to America where wallets
are guns. The chirp you heard in the garden as of two black
holes merging is what we call the soul. And when we cup
our hands to drink at the fountain we make the shape
of his skull. Am I the only one who reads for thirst?
I walked in the gardens of Houston where lizards
took their colors at the borders between terror and wonder,
dread and leafy glade, between silence and Sinatra.
I walked in Pope’s garden in Twickenham that rhymed
wilderness and picturesque, walked in and out the stunted
self. In the garden of ruin new growth from the palms
I read as artful, neutral. In the romantic garden the fascists
sing, ‘I love you, I love you not.’ Statues in the gardens
are wrapped in Mylar blankets and blue plastic tarps
like refugees. I read them for reflection. I read for nation.
I read for color and form. In the orangery of Guantanamo,
in the grapevine of Babylon, I’m lost. I went there for the buzz,
the fiction of silence and a better self. Dressed sentimentally
in a dynamite suit in the garden of dates and pomegranates,
I read for patterns of the blast.”
The Poems of Emily Dickinson ed. by Ralph W. Franklin
“The Moon is distant from the Sea –
And yet, with Amber Hands –
She leads Him – docile as a Boy –
Along appointed Sands –
He never misses a Degree –
Obedient to Her eye –
He comes just so far – toward the Town –
Just so far – goes away –
Oh, Signor, Thine, the Amber Hand –
And mine – the distant Sea –
Obedient to the least command
Thine eye impose on me –”