a vine wrapped around
until it bowed the tree,
there was a rock
creekwater wore
to slickest organ.
I will carry this lust
a thousand years.
He will bend to it
and stoop to it
and never guess
the magnet.
we have grown nautical
you left a souvenir
on my thigh
it had a mussel’s shape
and the cast
of the water’s
weedy greens
you made a fool of me
I made you queen
of this underwater
forest I gave you pearls
and lanternfish
you gave me a black eye
you said I’d thank you for
later now
it’s later and
the water’s dark and still
and still there’s so much
teeming
such cold blood
tentacle and fin
Lily of the valley
In the lake bodies shift
with the currents. Waterskaters
traverse their tapestries. On the bank
grow plants that no longer have names.
Some have tongues to catch the feet
of flying things. Two shoes lie
on the bank as well. A child’s shoes.
A girl’s. Can you see her, dirty dress,
dirty soles? The arms that held her?
In a convulsion of tenderness
that wasn’t tenderness. In a fever
that wasn’t fever. In this heat
the lily of the valley exudes
such sweetness a man can’t think.
All you want to do is stop up
those pealing mouths. Those white
white skirts, unutterably clean.
Lewis and Clark
The air stung with velocity
and need. All the lights veered,
rafters heaved. I starved myself
beyond doors and windows.
I hollowed out seeds
and sowed blank fistfuls
along the wounded furrows.
Balanced the shotgun on broken
days. Made myself alone
enough to frighten me.
Almanac
How many times
can you plough
the same field, the same soil
until all that will grow
are spined and banded things—
a knob, a spike, a bulge, an eye
split from the rind
peering casually
into an approaching thorn—
a century may yield
some gold or pink reprieve
and all the rest is scar.
Husband
Even if you could dredge this river
there’s nowhere to put the water.
The land’s run out of hiding places—
I’ve stuffed too many secrets there.
My tumble with the farmhand, rustler,
priest. Arsenic in the pie, sweet
thief. The baby didn’t wake. Nor did
the hound, rank snarl of fur. Solely
by my grace do you sit down to morning
rashers, jaundiced eyeballs
on your plate. Husband, they see as I do
the hour your use ends. I have meet help.
The fields near plough themselves, gloved hands
collect the dozens, the milk. I’ll soon have
all I need. A truce of soil and rain,
pest and feast. In such bounty
shall my finest secret
flush and swell. In such peace.
driveway
i.
the car was up on blocks
the driveway fresh and sleek
and fragrant as new
grief i took
that engine where
it belonged and punished it
a little in the air
that parted for its force—
its guttural tugged my
insides and the day
collapsed and spread—
ii.
i could be dead
and still want you
is what he
what he said
iii.
i’m grease
beneath your knees
i melt and shine
and reek the car
was up on blocks and i
in it, racked, trussed
like any meat, a cigarette
tucked in the window crease—
don’t tell me i’m biographical
i’ve stained the seats my eyes are wet
the grass is thick with wings
and blood and i
will not remember you
Grisly variations
i. Mercy
That white disc drills a hole
through another morning.
Something’s fallen in the well.
Bald lake spreads itself out like glitter
in dried glue. Two spotted fawns
leap silently, on springs.
Wingless birds command the trees.
All the trees are numbered.
Through meadow iris, insect foam,
pain walks by on stilts.
My scream wakes up
before I do.
ii. Veer
Clean muslin draped over a pie
to keep the flies off. Sour
cherry, say, or lemon rind. A dark spot
on the X-ray. Magpies at the feeder,
foiling the squirrel. Twenty more years
to make a child. A beehive—
all that life stuffed in the walls.
I go down to the lake every morning
to watch the mist rise. Nothing
gets clearer. God a newborn
foal, teetering in the barn. God
in a pilot suit, covering his eyes.
iii. Script
Tarzan swung from limb to limb.
Newspapers told the story
of his capture. It was ugly.
Such kneeling, such caprice,
the net laid out, and silent.
Then a commotion and grief.
Top hats and cigars and flashbulbs.
All the doors and windows
numbered. They taught him to write
in a fine Christian hand
with fine polished fingernails.
I don’t know what’s come over me.
Eulalia
All day fog sang
its songs of burying.
The world erased itself
and drew itself back in.
A girl once stood
out on the road
and offered herself
to the wind. The wind
a name for anything
that wasn’t home. A grin,
a beer, a joint, backseat
exchange. Another state
or state of being. In cutoff
shorts and cutoff shirt
and cut off everything. Midsummer
and the air is tar and sweetest
garbage, ozone,
watered hay. The air itself
is offering. Maybe
she’s still waiting.
Maybe long and far away
and blossoming.
Maybe she’s in the ground
dismantled to root and bone
and quaking grass and memory.
Each foot of ground
its own gone story.
Quarry
That absence filled with water, and we swam:
kept to the surface, above rusted beams
and weeds and car or body parts, above
sequins of glass, or rutted signs, or cans
crushed to bright coins, or hypodermics.
The water covering that rich debris
was clear and pure and cold an
d so were we,
diving, careening, all body, all gasps
of bubbled air. Cast off on clefts of rock:
our clothes, and school, and family. Too soon
behind the quarry wall, hauling away
the day’s last heat, the sun ducked, mosquitoes
clamored for sweet new blood. Leaving, we’d drag
our feet. But we were lighter for the floating.
Little fugue
i. Vertigo
I captained a ship
its name was confusion
gullsong accompanied it
on the quivering seas
I sowed seeds of evergreen
laurel, wild thyme
they took root in the whitecaps
they took root in the brine
I steered through this forest
I steered by the stars
which were eyes fixed on stalks
of a plant I didn’t know
ii. Low
I cast my faith out on the waters
I sank into the brine
all the fishes swam to me
their o-mouths like rings
marrying me
to their kingdom
and then I knew
cure has so many forms
the key is merely
to stay alive
Dear columbine, dear engine
Mere water will force a flower
open. Then with a touch
the beautiful intact collapses
into color filament and powder.
It’s all my fault. All hands on deck
to help collect what’s spilled.
That could be me beneath
a bridge. Torn up beside the road,
a bloat of skin and fur.
Afloat in bathtub, clean,
blue-lipped, forgiven. Facedown
in the snow. Why do you
imagine these terrible things?
asks my mother, or her
ghost. Because the paper’s
crisp and white. Because
no slate’s unwritten.
Because the ant that scaled
this flower head
has nowhere else to go.
Dead things
Last night the moon
lit up a squashed frog
so gleamily. I saw a bird
I can’t even describe. And the bat
squealing in my glove—
dark courier, I set it free
but come morning
there was one out on the balcony
rotting in the blanket of its own fur.
All the dead things hurt too much.
Even the bright things breathing.
What sound
Soon the wet will dry,
hiding emerge. Until then,
this swelling and speaking
of silent things. This is
what a fern sounds like.
Wild mint. The fence and wire
and rock wall and the moss
cushioning it. The ground.
The air itself. The dark.
Everything has a voice
and remarkably the same,
in this pummeling.
Mouth
There was a night in summer
I was a white candle
I made such a mess
in the dark
you made a mess
of me
I ate it up like air
the bugs and earth and grass
my hair a nest
dirt built a home in
you called me dirty girl
I ate that up too
my mouth was full
of mouths
there was
no end to it
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collection Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Harvard Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other journals and anthologies. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. She is a freelance editor in San Francisco.
ALSO BY MELISSA STEIN
Rough Honey (winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to the editors of the publications in which the following poems first appeared, some in slightly different form:
The American Poetry Review: “Racetrack,” “Safehouse”
Beloit Poetry Journal: “Playhouse”
The Cincinnati Review: “Vertical”
Copper Nickel: “Blue ring,” “Husband”
Four Way Review: “How I”
Harvard Review: “Milk”
The Literary Review: “Lily of the valley,” “Lion,” “Zero”
The Los Angeles Review: “Ardor,” “Vows”
Mead: The Magazine of Literature & Libations: “Hive”
Memorious: “Lung,” “Semaphore”
Narrative: “Beast,” “blessings,” “Harder,” “Heir,” “Mouth”
New England Review: “Portrait of my family as a pack of cigarettes”
The Normal School: “Rapture”
Painted Bride Quarterly: “Bind,” “Lewis and Clark”
Poem-a-Day: “Anthem,” “Dear columbine, dear engine,” “Ring”
Poetry Northwest: “Jigsaw”
Redivider (Beacon Street Prize): “Vitrine”
River Styx: “Eulalia”
32 Poems: “Flower,” “Never said,” “Quarry (As you slept)”
Tin House: “Quarry (A girl is swimming naked),” “Slap,” “Wormhole”
Washington Square Review: “Birthstone”
The Yale Review: “Seven Minutes in Heaven”
§
“Anthem” is an ode to Philly in the ’80s and ’90s. In “Vows,” I owe the phrase regret machine to a Matthew Zapruder poem title. The Montgomery Inn was a restaurant and event space in Montgomeryville, PA, way back when. At the beginning of “Wormhole,” I play fast and loose with geography for the sake of verbal simplicity. The first line of “Clerestory” is from Sylvia Plath’s “The Hanging Man.” The opening of the poem “Masochist” refers to Frightened Rabbit’s song “The Modern Leper.”
§
I’m extraordinarily grateful to Michael Wiegers and the entire Copper Canyon crew—you’re the poetry family I’ve always dreamed of.
For fellowships and awards that supported the writing of these poems, my immense thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Norton Island Residency Program.
Much appreciation to my Thirteen Ways writing group comrades for helping me hone these poems, especially Idris Anderson and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet. And a special thanks to my dearest Robert Thomas, whose generosity, forbearance in the face of my neuroses, and keen insight are formidable.
Warm thanks to Heather Stein, Carol and Barry Stein, and Debbi LaPorte as well as to Ron Baron, Arielynn Cheng, RC, Ed Falco, Rebecca Foust, Ian Goldstein, Marisa Handler, Erika Meitner, Dean Rader, Kathy Rose, Dominic Santiago, Steve Shochet, Phil Yarnall, and so many others who made this book possible in their own ways.
My gratitude to Mark Doty for setting me on this journey by plucking out Rough Honey; Jason Hill for sweet dreams, swimming holes, and research; Lucy Kirchner for design smarts and solidarity in quirkiness; Marie-Elizabeth Mali for support and selfies; Emily McLeod for steady kindness and pho; David Monington for whiskey, beats, smoldering, and extremity; Tomás Q. Morín, poetry buddy and therapist; John Poch for fierceness and feedback; and David Wolfgang-Kimball, gateway drug extraordinaire.
And of course to all the tacos and desert peeps, and the adventure buddies and collaborators who shall remain nameless: may we ever party in the dark.
Copyright 2018 by Melis
sa Stein
All rights reserved
Cover photograph: Arielynn Cheng
ISBN: 978-1-55659-529-5
eISBN: 978-1-61932-186-1
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