Something Bright Then Holes Read online

  Something Bright, Then Holes

  © 2007 Maggie Nelson

  ISBN 13: 978-1-933368-80-1

  Interior design by Kimi Traube

  Cover design by Nora Nussbaum

  Cover art: “Heartattack City” by Tara Jane O’Neil

  Published by Soft Skull Press

  55 Washington St, Suite 804

  Brooklyn NY 11021

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.pgw.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress

  e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-697-1

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  SOMETHING BRIGHT, THEN HOLES

  THE CANAL DIARIES

  THE HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL CARE

  MORNING EN ROUTE TO THE HOSPITAL

  A HALO OVER THE HOSPITAL

  AT THE HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL CARE

  SOMETHING BRIGHT, THEN HOLES

  THE MUTE STORY OF NOVEMBER

  MERCURIAL

  INTERLUDE

  OUR JOB

  EVERYONE NEEDS

  PROMISE

  THANKSGIVING

  WHAT IT IS

  ON THE DAY OF YOUR LEAVE-TAKING

  LANDSCAPE

  WINTER SONG

  TRIOLET

  TELL ME

  THE ROSE

  FATHER’S DAY

  A RETURN

  MORNING PRAYERS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SOMETHING BRIGHT, THEN HOLES

  I used to do this, the self I was

  used to do this

  the selves I no longer am

  nor understand.

  Something bright, then holes

  is how a girl, newly-sighted, once

  described a hand. I reread

  your letters, and remember

  correctly: you wanted to eat

  through me. Then fall asleep

  with your tongue against

  an organ, quiet enough

  to hear it kick. Learn everything

  there is to know

  about loving someone

  then walk away, coolly

  I’m not ashamed

  Love is large and monstrous

  Never again will I be so blind, so ungenerous

  O bright snatches of flesh, blue

  and pink, then four dark furrows, four

  funnels, leading into an infinite ditch

  The heart, too, is porous;

  I lost the water you poured into it

  THE CANAL DIARIES

  The Canal Sitters

  Every evening the canal sitters

  make their way down the street, past

  the gigantic mustard-colored pipes

  that grind up cement, past

  the pale blue and pink factories

  exhaling through their vents

  Past the marble warehouse with its vats of stucco

  Past the oil trucks that stain the walls of their stable

  Past the yellow diamond that reads DEAD END

  then farther down, another: END

  It’s why we’ve come here, apparently, and why

  we already know we may not stay long

  Meanwhile the sitters have lived here forever

  Their job is to sit and watch for new life

  Sit and see if anything is growing, has grown, will grow

  Sit and see what life is left after all human attempts

  to strangle it. What could possibly be born.

  They sit and watch the cliffs, they sit and watch

  the water. They sit and watch the pigeons

  wheel above the cement crusher’s

  mean lavender dust. You have to watch

  very carefully. You have to sit at dusk

  with the man who wears all black, with his

  white beard, his ropey face. You cannot ask

  his name. You have to use

  a quiet pen. You have to notice

  the white moth on the engorged

  gladiola, you have to pay attention

  to the wind. You have to go inside

  if the wind moves the dust toward you

  And it may come flying toward you

  Invisible, coarse, and possible

  Flying like a knife down the water.

  *

  Green

  Screams from an Italian family up the street

  That stupid kid hitting rock after rock with his metal bat.

  I’d be a shitty boyfriend, you said, as if

  making a promise. I said, It’s not the content

  I’m in love with, it’s the form. And that

  was tenderness. All last year

  I planned to write a book about

  the color blue. Now I’m suddenly surrounded

  by green, green gagging me

  pleasurably, green holding onto my hips

  from behind, digging into

  the cleft, the cleft

  that can be made. You have no idea

  what kind of light you’ll let in

  when you drop the bowl, no idea

  what will make you full

  *

  One week

  One week on the canal, one week

  of this new life. Each day brings

  astonishing sights; each day

  I’m more petrified.

  Maybe living with you doesn’t have to be so hard

  (not a new thought)

  If I could uproot the weed in me

  the weed that grows and grows

  so rank and garrulous, so greedy

  for the sun, its supremacy

  In the library I pick up book after book of poetry

  All of the voices are up late, sticky

  in their pajamas, all of them are listening

  to imaginary foxes, sounding out their cells

  and writing the distance down.

  *

  The man in black

  The man I feared most

  is now the man with whom I sit

  at every sunset.

  I didn’t know

  *

  The Collector

  Early evening, a guy with a shopping cart full of debris.

  He speaks in a raspy whisper, so if you want to hear him

  you have to get very close to his mouth.

  They dump down here at night, he says. Always have. Pure

  economics. They pay a guy like me 50 bucks

  to come dump. But I don’t dump, he says.

  I collect, he says.

  *

  A Desk in the Weeds

  The dumping makes me angry.

  This week, a desk in the weeds, all the drawers

  locked shut. Used condoms stuck

  to the faux wood like slugs.

  Then one morning all the drawers

  were pried open, but there were no hidden

  treasures, just an old lady’s datebook,

  old lady handwriting.

  Fell asleep in the East Broadway subway station last night

  until the Mobile Washing Unit spilled water mixed with bleach

  on my feet, as if I were just some sludge

  that came with the station, which, in a sense,

  I was. Now it’s a new day, full of promises

  I can’t keep, or am choosing to be unable.

  *

  Invisible

  Last night I made a pact

  with the man

  in black. His hands

  were rough

  *

  Special water

  Low tide, a little girl picks up a stone

  and puts it in her mouth; her father yells NO

 
and peels it out. This is special water

  he says, gently shaking her

  little body. It may look pretty

  but it’s very, very bad for you.

  The dog doesn’t care, she prances

  in the muck, then climbs in my lap

  and licks. Some habits die hard, says her owner

  His wet black blunt smelling like heaven

  *

  Night-sitting

  Went down to the canal last night

  at one a.m., my first time

  night-sitting. The water was black or just

  the darkest green, ultra-perilous

  its slow lapping bringing back

  my old impulse to suicide

  suddenly, without being

  unhappy, or at least without

  knowing it. Last night before we hung up

  I called you my friend. It felt right, for

  the moment. The green canoe still humps

  the red canoe, the water very still

  though the trees are shaking, the fish monitors

  just tired logs and nets, bobbing stupidly

  against the cliff. You said my last letter

  takes up a lot of space; is radiant.

  I do feel a light growing, from far inside,

  like the moon just a bit fatter

  than half. And now after one sitting

  I’m no longer scared of the canal at night

  Not scared to sit on the concrete slab

  stained with graffiti, not afraid to admire

  the new rash of marigolds

  glowing in the white, industrial light.

  *

  Raccoon Watch

  What’s new? I ask the man in black.

  One blue heron, he says, but it didn’t land.

  He doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t look

  in my direction. I’m on raccoon watch, he explains.

  Forty silent minutes later, three raccoons

  come out of their burrows, braid their bodies

  along the cliff. It’ll be raccoon stew tonight

  for the homeless! he cries, clapping his hands

  together, as the moon rises gold

  behind them, another goddamn sign

  *

  All the parts

  We’re going to get sprinkles, he says.

  We’re going to get thunder.

  I sit on my notebook, ready

  to keep it dry. First light, then harder

  the drops make an orgy of circles

  on the water. Only I can save

  myself, you said, a knowledge

  that goes both ways. Where the drops hit

  the paper, pale red spots appear

  Some deep chemical mystery

  All the parts I failed to cover

  *

  Reckless

  When the rain comes

  the water lifts itself up

  and surpasses the moss

  line, oozes over

  the cobblestones,

  threatening everything

  in its path. Last night

  I dreamt I didn’t move

  in time, just stepped in

  Totally unmindful

  Totally reckless

  My feet thus lost

  to the live virus

  *

  27 Days of Rain

  Is it action that waits

  in the wings of

  emotion, or

  is this feeling

  all that will remain?

  Actual touch is

  overrated, some say.

  I differ. Go to sleep

  in anger and heat

  and wake again

  to the pour

  of rain, streets

  emptied of their

  carnival. Pink prints

  on white tissue

  announce another month’s

  passing, inconsolable.

  Who’s to say

  if this whirring

  is predestined

  yearning, or simply

  the otter grown tired

  of playing its harp

  on one side? I couldn’t

  chisel anything more

  off my life, not even

  if I tried.

  *

  Night Herons

  There are rumors

  of night herons

  Red eyes

  Yellow legs

  I’ll believe it

  when I see it

  All I’ve seen

  are those long, blonde bodies

  that race along the surface

  at night, fast as bats

  but fat with grace

  and power.

  *

  Twinned

  for BB

  It’s good to see you, you

  who shows me the salt boxes

  on the bridge, you who

  will sit with me late

  at the edge. The water

  is perfectly still, as if

  we pressed the planet

  on pause, the trees and factories

  reflected so precisely

  that no horizon is

  possible. The world thus

  appears as it truly is:

  twinned, or twice

  as deep and large.

  *

  That rusty door

  The barbed wire is lovely tonight

  and the sparrows don’t mind

  its tangle. How many ways are there

  to get saturated in another’s mind?

  I play my little movie of you

  over again, trying to discover

  any lost details. When I open my eyes

  I see that rusty door across the canal

  that leads from nowhere to nothing, just like

  that Cuban prison, where the poet

  stumbles out of the sump

  and God is waiting with his freedom

  *

  Which cloud

  As summer thickens the garden gets

  explosive, almost angry: tall, weepy

  coils, psychotic

  vegetables. You could break

  a hard-won sobriety

  just by looking at it. Look

  somewhere else, for God’s sake,

  look up. Which cloud

  does God live on? The one

  in the foreground, the gold one, the one

  by all the mottled blue. In the morning

  when we could finally see

  you said you were trying to understand

  my face. Or maybe it’s

  the marbled one, the one that looks like Earth

  as seen from outer space

  *

  Lonelyville

  The afternoon sun comes & puts

  its shadows on the wood

  A blue hump for my hand

  A sharp dark curl for a stalk

  The water here runs thin and sweet with rust

  I will fly toward you, if I must

  *

  Evensong

  Giving up? the man asks

  when I close my book

  Yes, the light is fading

  I know I could read your poems

  in the dark, but I am allowed only one

  a day, and even that’s

  too much.

  *

  The Ides of July

  Lost in time, wind coming in

  from the wrong direction. There are men

  who control the bridges from sealed

  yellow chambers, they stay up all night

  and guard the river. You’re just picking at it

  like a scab, it’s the kind of thing

  someone’s mother would say, probably mine.

  The wind starts in the tree that’s greediest

  for possession, then moves on to seize

  the whole stand. Someone tied a sweatsock

  round a loop of barbed wire. Someone lost

  their Levis in the water. I’m jumpy tonight,

  keep
thinking someone’s in the bushes

  A dumper, a looter, a squatter, a mugger

  He writes like a spider got hold of a pen, it’s that wild.

  The lower rung of sky is washed in pink

  but the magic that slapped me awake

  has momentarily chosen to abate, my antennae

  wilted, no shoulder missing my head.

  YOU SUCK STAG BALLS it says

  on a rowboat’s back. A phantom orchestra strikes up

  from the abandoned brick palace