Maggie
Nelson
The
Mute Story of November
Living as if every moment announced a beloved
and
it does
Then
the bleeding-off
Maybe
you are the sea to me, or me to you
A
reasonable enough supposition
Can’t you see, I’m busy
triangulating
Gingko
leaves at my feet
A
flood of questing yellow
They
say that everything that is growing
will stop growing soon, maybe
this weekend, the first deep freeze
The
season of falling
will
give way to the season
of
brittle upturned sticks
Who
cares, it’s all equally gorgeous
and last night, a lunar eclipse
Immaculate white moving in and out
of
a rusty red rind, I pulled
a
sheet of Plexiglas over
the
hole in the roof
so
I could watch it from inside the boat
in
which I now live, the inverted boat
from
which we ride the sky
Nothing
can go wrong, do you understand
Nothing
can ever go wrong
This
is what happens when you cease
your
management
The
blue and gold of the morning
just appear on the sidewalk, ongoing drift
of garbage, a tire is good to sit in
A
window pane may flake in the wind
The
mute story of November
I
don’t even have to steal
your
words, you give them to me for free
So
strange to know that you can and cannot hurt me
My
heart just can’t break any more, now that
it
has changed substance, is full
of
fluid and fire and air and turning
like
a little wheel in its broth
And
I can and cannot hurt you either, now that
I
am utterly virginal, preposterous
as
that may sound, it’s also true
Sometimes
you get to start anew
The
pages of my book wet and limpid
with
tea, on a Sunday, the spidery plants
reaching
haphazardly in all directions
from
their dilapidated mobile, it’s part
of
the magic here, and the painted green
cement
floor. What part of this autonomy
am
I not supposed to like?; I too have been
much
lonelier. Maybe in eleven rooms
you’ll
find some sort of home, or base, it’s like
there’s
this enormous surplus of feelings and/or words
and
we prick at the tarp, letting little pinwheels of light come in
but
never really touching the source
So
little time, really, we’ve eaten some food, slept badly
swam
in jumbled waters, very little coming
I
don’t even know you, shadowed by the knowing
The
knowing that has nothing to do
with life-stories, their wicked specificity
Sometimes
my speech moves so fast inside me
before
it hatches, and I know I’m about to flop over
into
tongues, but I don’t care: this is the speed
at
which I run, and you run fast, too, so I let you
touch
me with one hand while the other steers a car
through
midtown Manhattan, it’s almost as if
none
of this has ever happened, it just shines
then
gets enclosed in an envelope decorated with faded blue stamps
from
the Belgian Congo. It’s such a relief
when
tears come from the cold, like yesterday
on
River Street, all the men lined up in their idling cars
by
the power plant, what are they waiting for?
With
all due humility, I have to say
I know it now, or it knows me
the
peace-feeling
that
stays even as the body races and pants
above
or along it, when the team suddenly does
a
jazz square in unison, when a dream repeals
an
entire impediment overnight, when the whole world
The whole world is strobing
North First
A corner of the world, a tent
of walls, a pause
in a place, that’s all
home
is, a jar that arcs,
bends and arcs to hold
imaginary water
Until
the glass takes back
its bouquet, and the shards
come to adorn the street’s
abandoned tires.
The
Main Drift
Gorgeous night at the harbor
The
world allows
suicide;
it also allows
this vista. Somewhere
an
ashtray sits in
darkness, with its greasy
gray
skids. But somewhere
else.
Our
Job
I
love the crazy look you get at night
when
you think there might be rats nearby
Yet
in the morning I come home and cry, thinking
like
Spock: This feeling has all the characteristics of pain
Look at you, someone says; who, then, does
the
looking? I hate the phrase “self-preservation”
I
mean what, exactly, is one
preserving?
Then I remember
about
GUARD RAILS, GUARD RAILS
FOR
THE HEART, how did I miss
that
one? It’s all because
I’m
an ectomorph, and you are too
“Lean
and slightly muscular”
It’s
our job, you say, our job to feel
Our
job to see it through
Like
a dog fixed on a rubber ball
tossed
deep into the leaves?
(No answer—)
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