a bed is left open to a mirror
a mirror gazes long and hard at a bed
light fingers the house with its own acoustics
one of them writes this down
one has paper
bed of swollen creeks and theories and coils
bed of eyes and leaky pens
much of the night the air touches arms
arms extend themselves to air
their torsos turning toward a roll
of sound: thunder
night of coon scat and vandalized headstones
night of deep kisses and catamenia
his face by this light: saurian
hers: ash like the tissue of a hornets’ nest
one scans the aisle of firs
the faint blue line of them
one looks out: sans serif
“Didn’t I hear you tell them you were born
on a train”
what begins with a sough and ends with a groan
groan in which the tongue’s true color is revealed
the comb’s sough and the denim’s undeniable rub
the chair’s stripped back and muddied rung
color of stone soup and garden gloves
color of meal and treacle and sphagnum
hangers clinging to their coat
a soft-white bulb to its string
the footprints inside us
iterate the footprints outside
the scratched words return to their sleeves
the dresses of monday through friday
swallow the long hips of weekends
a face is studied like a key
for the mystery of what it once opened
“I didn’t mean to wake you
angel brains”
ink of eyes and veins and phonemes
the ink completes the feeling
a mirror silently facing a door
door with no lock no lock
the room he brings into you
the room befalls you
like the fir trees he trues her
she nears him like the firs
if one vanishes one stays
if one stays the other will or will not vanish
otherwise my beautiful green fly
otherwise not a leaf stirs
C.D. Wright
“Floating Trees”, copyright 2002 by C.D. Wright, from Steal Away: New and Selected Poems, published by Copper Canyon Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
C. D. Wright. Poet. Rhode Island, U.S.A. Ms. Wright has published nine collections of poetry, including two book length poems, Deepstep Come Shining and Just Whistle. Honors include State Poet of Rhode Island, fellowships from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and NEA, and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts and the Lannan Foundation.
©2004 Voices Underground
an Earthwork by Patricia Goodrich
www.patriciagoodrich.com
Email: patricia@patriciagoodrich.com
Op-Ed
I believe in a hardheaded art. An unremitting, unrepentant practice of one’s own faith in the word in one’s own obstinate terms. I believe the word was made good from the start; that it remains so to this second. I believe words are golden as goodness is golden. Even the humble word “brush” gives off a scratch of light. There is not much poetry from which I feel barred, whether it is arcane or open in the extreme. I attempt to run the gamut because I am pulled by the extremes. I believe the word used wrongly distorts the world. I hold to hard distinctions of right and wrong. Also that antithetical poetries can and should co-exist without crippling one another. They not only serve to define the other to a much more exacting degree than would be possible in the absence of one or the other; they insure the persistence of heterogeneous (albeit discouragingly small) constituencies. While I am not always equal to it, I appreciate the fray. I am neither too old for it yet nor too finished off. I am not sure of where it is I am going. Important, I believe, to resist closure in one’s own work while assiduously working toward its completeness. Detrimental, I think, the dread of being passed on the left, as is the deluded and furthermore trivializing notion of one’s own work being an advance over any thing or any one. Truthfulness is crucial. A continuous self-criticism is demanded of the effort without which only non-art gets made, that is, manufactured. “ A poet would show little thought to say poetry is opposed to since it is added to like science,” insisted Zukofsky. So do I, insist. Consequently, I would contest those writers whose end is (reviling-all-the-way) to prevail.
