Something Bright Then Holes
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