by Sarah Vap
PENGUIN BOOKS
VIABILITY
SARAH VAP is the author of five collections of poetry and poetics, including Dummy Fire, recipient of the 2006 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, and American Spikenard, recipient of the 2006 Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, and Gulf Coast, among other publications. She lives in Venice, California.
THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES
The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded annually by the Lannan Foundation; Amazon Literary Partnership; Barnes & Noble; the Poetry Foundation; the PG Family Foundation; and the Betsy Community Fund; Joan Bingham, Mariana Cook, Stephen Graham, Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds, William Kistler, Jeffrey Ravetch, Laura Baudo Sillerman, and Margaret Thornton. For a complete listing of generous contributors to the National Poetry Series, please visit www.nationalpoetryseries.org.
2014 COMPETITION WINNERS
Monograph, by Simeon Berry of Somerville, MA
Chosen by Denise Duhamel for University of Georgia Press
The Regret Histories, by Joshua Poteat of Richmond, VA
Chosen by Campbell McGrath for HarperCollins
Let’s Let That Are Not Yet: Inferno, by Ed Pavlić of Athens, GA
Chosen by John Keene for Fence Books
Double Jinx, by Nancy Reddy of Madison, WI
Chosen by Alex Lemon for Milkweed Editions
Viability, by Sarah Vap of Venice, CA
Chosen by Mary Jo Bang for Penguin Books
PENGUIN BOOKS
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Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Vap
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Excerpt from “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South” by Alfred A. Conrad and John R. Meyer, The Journal of Political Economy, April 1958. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press.
Excerpt from “Trafficked into Slavery on Thai Trawlers to Catch Food for Prawns” by Kate Hodal, theguardian.com, June 10, 2014. Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2015.
Financial terms are the copyrighted property of Investopedia, LLC. All rights reserved.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-40735-0
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Vap, Sarah.
[Poems. Selections]
Viability / Sarah Vap.
pages ; cm—(National Poetry Series)
ISBN 978-0-14-312828-1
I. Title.
PS3622.A679A6 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015011853
Cover design: Jason Ramirez
Cover art: Collage by Eliash Strongowski
Version_1
for my father, Daniel J. Vap
1943–2014
an animal of actual mercy
CONTENTS
About the Author
About the National Poetry Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
VIABILITY
Notes
The more torture went on in the basement, the more insistently they made sure the roof rested on columns.
—Adorno
Where there is no love, put love—and you will find love.
—John of the Cross
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These poems appeared, sometimes under a different title or in a different form, in the following publications. Grateful acknowledgment to: The American Poetry Review, Court Green, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Marooned, Packingtown Review, Starting Today (anthology), Fire On Her Tongue (anthology), Poem-A-Day, Interim, Lingerpost, The New Census (Thermos blog), Spoon River Poetry Review.
My gratitude:
is enormous for the many, many friends, teachers, strangers, and family who have taught and offered me their human love. Thank you to Mary Jo Bang, David St. John, Carmen Giménez Smith, Danielle Pafunda, Todd Fredson, and Norman Dubie, who helped me in very different ways with this book. Thank you to Marcia Aquino, to my parents, to Todd, Oskar, Mateo & Archie, who made writing this book possible.
The splintered log filled me mouth to groin. And growing—growing, the emerald was blood. The stones in the water were eyes and I was not recognized by either the givings or the killings that will make a woman a mother, that will make a mother a moon dropped to the water and carving out her own eye. Our family was afraid for itself until we were worn. And became, at evening’s porcelain quality, like even the dead dog’s bones, silent and white. The infant and the carriage, frozen below the firepond—they held themselves, were alone. We looked down at them through thick ice while they ripped him from me in the single, performed loneliness.
Bloodletting: A period marked by severe investing losses. Bloodletting may occur during a bear market, in which the value of securities in many sectors may decline rapidly and heavily.
The body below my head is exploded, memory bloodlets. Remembrance, rapidly and heavily.
Hysteresis: From the Greek term meaning “a coming short, a deficiency.” Hysteresis, a term coined by Sir James Alfred Ewing, a Scottish physicist and engineer (1855–1935), refers to systems, organisms and fields that have memory. In other words, the consequences of an input are experienced with a certain lag time, or delay. One example is seen with iron: iron maintains some magnetization after it has been exposed to and removed from a magnetic field. In economics, hysteresis arises when a single disturbance affects the course of the economy.
Hysterical stitched together it used to be something else I don’t know what. Oozing parted roughly it used to be something else I don’t know what. Pulling itself toward me something needs help I don’t remember what. Does it hum, it does. I listen to it hum. Does it hum, it does. I listen to it hum. Does it hum, it does: I will listen to it hum.
Hold him. An infant can’t love himself, I think. Plum, magenta reversals of light—a cloth ball to roll to the infant. His is the more decent dark radiance—he is still an infant picking through a pile of yarn. He might watch the beautiful things of this world disappear. Yet where my remembrance joins his reminiscence—as scraps of paper on the floor, or a few purple tiles. Who, on the advice of her soul alone, could be the counterweight of his plain light. But the final color is different, as something permanent is. As an heir to memory is, or as a love that will hurt us.
Where there is no love, put love—and you will find love. Where there is no memory, put memory—and you will find memory. Where there is no pull, put iron filings, put metal, put bindings, put jaw-traps wide open, and there you will find the pull.
—John of the Cross
Leading Lipstick Indicator: An indicator based on the theory that a consumer turns to less expensive indulgences, such as lipstick, when she feels less than confident about the future. Therefore, lipstick sales tend to increase during times of economic uncertainty or a recession. Also known as the “lipstick effect.”
This term was coined by Leonard Lauder (chairman of Estée La
uder), who consistently found that during tough economic times, his lipstick sales went up. Believe it or not, the indicator has been quite a reliable signal of consumer attitudes over the years. For example, in the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks, lipstick sales doubled.
Breathing loaf of wild animal, give, I said to you once. Paint my eyes black at their edges. Blue powder that glows in the grease. Did I say it when I held our son up above my head laughing so hard my milk fell out of his mouth to the edge of my eye. But who would hear of blackened milk or of this joy, we are tired of women and children. Tired of a woman’s painted eye which has not stopped us, and God has not stopped us. The possibility is different where free and wild have lived in the adoring mind. The blackening woods at evening are beside me, pulling rabbits. Pulling rabbits.
What do we mean by “efficiency”? Essentially, we shall mean a comparison of the return from the use of this form of capital—Negro slaves—with the returns being earned on other capital assets at the time. Thus we mean to consider whether the slave system was being dragged down of its own weight; whether the allocation of resources was impaired by the rigidity of capitalized labor supply; whether southern capital was misused or indeed drawn away to the North; and, finally, whether slavery must inevitably have declined from an inability of the slave force to reproduce itself.
Where there is inability, put worth dragging down one’s own weight. Where capital is misused and drawn away, put more inability. Slavery’s failure is the fault of slavery’s inability—put much more fault, put membranes between the faults, and there you will find your inability.
—John of the Cross
To survive this, she whispers, this world. Her love lasts into the slipped marriage of her precisions—Latin, precis, is prayer. Precarios: the precious thing. Does the precious thing hum, it does. Does the precarious thing hum, it does.
In what ways was slavery allegedly responsible for the drain of capital from the South? The major avenues by which wealth is said to have been drained from the cotton states were the excessive use of credit and the “absorption” of capital in slaves.
I was looking for ways to help my family. This broker knew I was looking for work. He said he could find me a job in Thailand. All I had to do was pay a 12,000 baht fee. There was probably around 700 of us. Old men, teenage girls, everyone. We travelled in a convoy in pick-up trucks. Then we trekked for days through the jungle. There was no food. Some died on the way, others got left behind. When I saw the fishing boats, I realised I’d been sold.
Where there is no doubling, put rabbits—put lipstick. There you will find increase. Where lipstick, put absorption. Where absorption, put women. There is no reason to make this more difficult than it is. In what way is slavery responsible for the drain of capital from the South? Is this the question? Want increase, put increase, find increase.
—John of the Cross
Bo Derek: A slang term used to describe a perfect stock or investment. In the 1979 hit movie 10, actress Bo Derek portrayed the “perfect woman,” or “the perfect 10.” This term was used more often in the early 1980s, after the movie 10 first came out. Nowadays, the name of a more current celebrity, like Jennifer Lopez, might be used in finance jargon.
Was the southerner his own victim in an endless speculative inflation of slave prices?
It seems that the parlous state of fish stocks and the pressure to monitor supply chains for sustainability has made the issue of slavery visible. Two retailers who did not wish to be named said that when they started to look at where fish for prawn feed was coming from, it became clear that the boats engaged in illegal fishing were also likely to be using trafficked forced labour.
Where there is no love, put information. There you will find the algorithm. Put even more information. The algorithm will increase. Everything you want will increase.
—John of the Cross
Where there is no speculation, put inflation—and you will find love’s victim. Put the victim. Put operations all across the victim. Put very quiet calls for each other. If I understand, what we want here is an increase.
—John of the Cross
Night, two months along. I wanted an infant, I put an infant, and so there I will find an infant. I imagine we are together right now. Your fingers, we will sleep. Our daydreams—wishing for you across all of time’s thickness—across all of dark water and into entire night. Toothless and devout, the wormhole you could slip through. No light at all untelling our quietest calls for each other within the small time that we could be given. Darkness. Quiet. A speed, excessively given. Infant, our worlds are almost held together, will help be given.
The Halo Effect: A term used in marketing to explain the bias shown by customers towards certain products because of a favorable experience with other products made by the same manufacturer or maker. Basically, the halo effect is driven by brand equity.
The opposite of the halo effect is “cannibalization.”
Where there is no cannibalization, put wire—and you will find wire. Where there is no cannibalization, put memory—and you will find mind. Where there is no wire halo, put wire wrapped tightly around a mind. Put wire wrapped tightly around a torso. Put wire wrapped tightly around many bodies at the same time. Where there are no saints, put cannibalization—put body upon body—and there you will find even more.
—John of the Cross
Daydream: The infant becomes several large fish inside me, my mouth tastes like fishwater. I ooze fish, feel the fish churn and surge from vagina to tonsils they are becoming desperate. They want to escape out my throat I gag and I want, I whisper to you, to puke large, whole fishes. I want fishes up my throat and out my mouth. I want all my teeth to scrape at the scales as the fish swim up my throat and out my mouth. I want a paste of scales and blood to gather along the backs of all my teeth as the fish move up my throat and out my mouth. I am convulsing with maniac fish when the heat of my body turns on: the fish are stilling. The fish are boiling. The fish are dying I am the one doing it.
To the extent that profitability is a necessary condition for the continuation of a private business institution in a free-enterprise society, slavery was not untenable in the ante bellum American South.
Extensive overfishing in the Gulf of Thailand has forced Thai fleets to travel further afield for longer periods to meet market demands. According to UN estimates, roughly 40% of all Thailand’s seafood is now being caught in foreign waters, from Malaysia and Indonesia all the way out towards Papua New Guinea to the east and Bangladesh to the west.
Coupled with mounting petrol prices, this overfishing has led to ever-decreasing profit margins for Thai boat captains, says Human Rights Watch’s Robertson: “What motivates is not concern for fishermen’s welfare, but rather maximising catch and ensuring profitability, and that means 18- to 22-hour work days and martial discipline to keep men working.”
Untenable? Where there is no love, put continuation or put increase or put proliferation—and there you will find the love untenable. Language is not infinity. Language is not hopeful. There is no rapture in language. Language is always doing. Language is never undoing. I admit that I had hoped to “love” and “be loved.”
—John of the Cross
Skirt Length Theory: The idea that skirt lengths are a predictor of the stock market direction. According to the theory, if skirts are short, it means the markets are going up. And if skirts are long, it means the markets are heading down. Also called the Hemline Theory.
The idea behind this theory is that shorter skirts tend to appear in times when general consumer confidence and excitement is high, meaning the markets are bullish. In contrast, the theory says long skirts are worn more in times of fear and general gloom, indicating that things are bearish.
Although some investors may secretly believe in such a theory, serious analysts and investors—instead of examining skirt length to make investment decisions—insist on focusing on market fundamentals and data.
The actual bear is in a skirt. The actual bull is a saint. The actual fish is a multibillion-dollar industry. The actual skirt is a fundamental. What do you secretly believe in? What do you secretly want? Me—if I could conceive, I could increase.
—John of the Cross
Where there is no information, put information—put operations—the algorithm is unbreakable. The algorithm is thinking.
—John of the Cross
I examine the infant for breathing does it hum, it does. I examine my father for breathing does he hum, he does. There is a hum, therefore, at each end of my memory, and where there is memory there is the love cannibalizing the memory. My father is dying my infant might live. They are both in the same doorway. They are in the same light.
Cash Cow: 1. One of the four categories (quadrants) in the BCG growth-share matrix that represents the division within a company that has a large market share within a mature industry.