by Kay Ryan
FATAL FLAW
The fatal flaw
works through
the body like
a needle, just
a stitch now
and then, again
and again missing
the heart. Most
people never bend
in the fatal way
at the fatal instant,
although they
harbor a needle
they shouldn’t,
or, conversely,
some critical little
lifesaving sliver
is absent.
SPLITTING ICE
Like standing
on splitting ice
one foot on one
one on the
other piece.
Distressed like
the family of man
at the divorce
of the plates:
some cast into
a suddenly new
world as though
having sinned;
those kept behind
trapped and
bereft. But in
a person, one
foot will lift
and the split
resolve. So
why do the
self-saved
feel half left?
CRISS CROSSES
(Chiasmus)
Even how
the crow
walks is
criss crosses
as though
each step
checked the
last. No one
knows why
he advances
as well as he
does or
could expect
that laughable
croak to work
in so many
circumstances.
LITTLE DOTS
What else does the infinite consist of other than the incalculability of little dots?
—Robert Walser
The things we know
cannot be applied.
Dots, say. With dots
inside.
Walls of shelves of
jars of dots equal
one dot.
So no one is poor
nor are they lost
if they roll on the
floor.
DRAGON’S TEETH
Let the poet’s voice lose all its measure and joints, its character will not be changed by this; even the fragments will be beautiful.
—Montaigne
A small wallet
of dragon’s teeth
is so potent that
one wonders why
forces are raised
any other way.
The sower has a
crop of soldiers
in under a day.
Nonetheless
interest in
packets of these
pointed seeds stays
unaccountably low
across the
many fields
where they
would grow.
SHOOT THE MOON
To do it at all
we must do it
too soon: shoot
before the moon
to shoot the moon,
we learn, having
shot it dead,
bagged now and
heavy as a head.
A KIND OF LIFE
Coins cast
from coins
in a line
going back
to the time
when the
likeness
was struck
from life:
a kind of
life itself,
it could be
argued.
The continued
evolution of
a face
becoming cruder
and more
blurred.
BUNCHED CLOTHS
Artists have
found them
endlessly beautiful:
the casually cast
or bunched cloths
after the morning
meal or lunch, how
shadows dent and dimple
the soft collapsing
tents, the human
moment past. How
linen bends in
accidental sympathy
with time perhaps
(those mirrored C’s
Claesz saw and then
Cezanne again,
like laugh lines
at the corners of
time’s mouth). Here
in the after time,
the empty house.
THE MAIN DIFFICULTY OF WATER WHEELS
… was their inseparability from water.
—Wikipedia
There are machines of
great generative power
that can only work locally
for one reason or another.
The great fixed wheels
moved by water
cannot be moved
from water. It hurts
to think of anything
wrenched out of where
it works. But not
just for the work.
Those buckets
drenching the river,
all the ornaments
of torque.
WHY IT IS HARD TO START
A crust of jacks-shaped
interlocking
particles settles on
everything stopped.
More metallic and
angled than snow
or dust but something
like those in how
it packs. But also
like tumbleweeds,
the way they tangle
against a gate, how
you must crash
your way through,
breaking a million
little wrists. A resistance
like rip rap, too, that
thwarts tides. But small
of course, to work
inside hearts. That
pause before the next
beat starts, then that
sizzly sound? The
endless work of
overcoming; the
jacks going down.
MUSICAL CHAIRS
Only the one is
musical, actually.
The others are
ordinary, mostly
from the kitchen.
Not a peep of
music out of them
as they are taken
from rotation. Mum
chairs, tuneless
racks, dumbsticks,
next to the
escalating operatic
ravishments
of banishment
sung to the children
by the one chair
absent.
SOCK
Imagine an
inversion as
simple as socks:
putting your hand
into the toe of
yourself and
pulling. Now
when you talk
you are relieved
to find your tongue
is inside out. And
when you say I
believe I may be
based on a different
carbon, people
are shocked
as they always
should have been.
MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE
Your kingdom
has already
grown abstract.
No one with an
actual kingdom
suggests a trade
like that.
It can, of course,
have been so
rapid that you
still don’t know.
We have to hope
your voice will prove
the final property
to go:
of the ancestral timber
still ringing of
your great estates,
the lowliest page
of any one of which
would race to get
a horse to get
you out.
THINGS THAT HAVE STAYED IN POSITION
Things that have
stayed in position
may nevertheless
have almost no
root system. You
could unstick
and slide them
like chess pieces.
Much of this
apparently tenacious
earth is fairly slick.
METAL
We know
in our bones
what travels.
We can act
with dispatch
if we have to.
We know
where the
silver’s kept
and the blowtorch
and what else
is meltable.
Although it is
obnoxious to us
we can think
in ingots
and weigh
the precious
for metal.
BURNING TENT
In the drawing
of a cell straining
laterally to split
there’s no sense
that it hurts, but
why wouldn’t it.
It must be as
hard to double
as half die. In
which event
an organism’s
asked to reabsorb
a half gone black,
back out of systems
going blank. With
half its sufferance
denied, put out
the burning tent
and stay inside.
TRACERS
The mid-air ball
follows its arc
to the glove
in the left outfield
of the park.
There are rules.
Motion generates
projection. You
are not a fool
to believe it will
happen. Things
set a course and
follow it. The air
is full of places
where it works:
a girl and cat have
just assumed their
marks. Leading us
to think about
the dead and all
the shimmering
dots like tracers
hanging in the air
unclaimed. How
the dead can’t finish
the simplest thing.
TRIPPED
The feet
are stopped
but the brain
continues its
forward motion.
Say you were a
train engine,
and a bridge
had just fallen:
Not yet even
the beginnings
of information
up from the back cars
hitting the ocean.
THOSE PLACES
They are not
imaginary but
accessible only
intermittently.
Seasonal, shall
we say, in the way
of the exquisite
high parts of
Yosemite
which
having visited
you cannot wish
inhabited
more easily.
A TRENCH LIKE THAT
The question
is does
the sea go
exactly back
after a ship
passes. Is
a trench like
that an event
or not. Of the
vast upheaval
are there ever
final bumps and
dimples, a last
line of foam.
And where might
you think about
it from.
ALMOST
The mind likes
the squeeze
of chutes
and channels.
It will
go up the ramp
with cattle
pleased—almost
to the last
minute—to
almost have been
an ungulate.
VELVET
There are
hills you
long to
touch:
velvet to
the eyes.
So much
is soft
the wrong
size.
DYNAMIC SCALING
By using slow movements of large wings in a viscous medium, they were able to mathematically analyze the fast movements of tiny wings in air.
—New York Times Science section
There are only a few
knobs: size and speed
are two. Just turn down
a bird to big and slow
and you can learn
a lot. Of course the
empyrean is now goo
which means airplanes
are caught. You see
jellied crafts not
plying the sky.
The people inside
are wondering why.
MEMORY TABLE
Even a pin
set on a
memory table
falls through.
A bare wood
kitchen table
with square legs
kicked yellow
and blue from
painted chairs
pushed in
for thirty years.
That’s how little
a memory table
can do.
NATURE STUDY: SPOTS
Like something
that might also
happen in the head,
they are strange
rings that flatten
and spread chalky
grey vaccination
spots on bays,
creating an exact
but dimensionless
perimeter against
the deep nap of
ferns and mosses
that coats the trunk.
All that dense life:
kept out as though
these patches were
moon or had been
bombed. Reminding us
again that live things
can be flat. And flat
can stop green things
like that.
MISER TIME
Miser time grows
profligate near the
end: unpinching
and unplanning,
abandoning the
whole idea of
savings. It’s hard
to understand
but time apparently
expands with its
diminishing: the
door thrown wide
on sliding hills of high-denomination
bills and
nothing much to buy.
MORE OF THE SAME
More of the same
has a telltale
splice or hitch
after the first-of-the-same
(which,
at the time,
didn’t go by that
name). Things
are not quite
as fluid as we
wish, as though
there were
gaps in water,
bits of not-river;
and rivers were a
sequence of
patched fractures,
one discovered,
convincing by
speed alone like
life (ours now a
dropped dish).
THE FIRST OF NEVER
Never dawns
&
nbsp; as though
it were a day
and rises.
Our day-sense
says a day
can be out-waited.
So we wait.
That’s the
only kind
of time
we’ve ever known:
it should be
getting late;
she should be
getting home.
ALBUM
Death has a life
of its own. See
how its album
has grown in
a year and how
the sharp blot of it
has softened
till those could
almost be shadows
behind the
cherry blossoms
in this shot.
In fact you
couldn’t prove
they’re not.
THE OBSOLETION OF A LANGUAGE
We knew it
would happen,
one of the laws.
And that it
would be this
sudden: words
become a chewing
action of the jaws
and mouth, unheard
by the only other
citizen there was
on earth.
PARTY SHIP
You are a
land I can’t
stand leaving
and can’t not.
My party ship
is pulling out.
We all have
hats. I try to
toot some notes
you’ll understand
but this was not
our instrument
or plan.
BLAST
The holes have
almost left the
sky and the blanks
the paths—the
patches next to
natural, corroborated
by the incidental
sounds of practical
activities and crows,
themselves exhibiting