by Donna Masini
tense as a pencil,
is, in the one script,
sinner, the other I splices,
edits its replies.
Clips of spite lie
inert as a relic.
Reel after reel, tireless
each (center) sister
eclipses, splinters
her specter; it’s, in a sense,
epic
this urge to lie,
nest in a sister (the center)
unseen
Migraine
Imagine
Hildegard in her German
abbey, her visions of “sweet rain”
mere mirage;
nausea, aura, nerve storms ring-
ing her brain’s rim;
particles of light rain
the way grain showers gold in grim
tales. No margin.
No genii
her dove in the lattice? No halo?
Just a “phosphine rain”
“disorder of arousal,” anger
not prayer. Mosaic of rage.
Pain ramming
her mind’s screens. Imagine
the domed panes of the Gare
d’Orsay before art and enigma
replaced the trains. God? Mirage?
No savior to the manger
the migraine pulls in.
Deleted Scene: Last Day
I hear a book being written, my sister says, or is it a poem?
Her eyes are closed.
It has a lot of semicolons.
One sentence or two? she wants to know. Comma? Period?
Well, I say, semicolons join and separate.
Grammar, my sister says, is very interesting.
Revolve
back to the time we watched the watches revolve
in their revolving case, Mr. Webster watching over
in his drugstore smock and oily leer
for us to choose—say yes! stop! now!—then press the lever
so our watch stopped and hung,
a Ferris wheel’s highest rider rocking over
Coney Island. I can stop time, dollface; he’d say, every time, and revel
in his scratchy smock. Not once did we ever
buy a watch. I knew we’d leave with Aqua Velva or
Old Spice (the present for our father). Now watch time’s reel
spool back along its creaky wheel past fifth grade, third, first and veer
back down the chart of apes that straightened to our fathers. (Where was Eve?)
How right it seemed. I’d dreamed my father was a bear or
some fur-covered thing. Now Mr. Webster was an ape. O
all the world reduced to ore and roe
and nothing but what came before slimy eel
and horny vole. There Mr. Webster rove
the weedy grasses—grabbing at some girl. Olé! Olé!
Ah the world goes round and still Mr. Webster in his starring role:
King Kong, hairy-handed lover
grasping a girl, watching her shriek and reel
under his eely leer (I can stop time, dollface) forever.
Scary Movie
It was the future we watched—ferocious
pointy-headed, soon-to-be-rerun invaders
colliding out of alien stars with medieval fevers
and no-way-out jousting. Or Stone Age savages
roaring out of the past, with their brontosaurus breath
ripping femurs, shredding flesh like the orange piranha
macerating a puppy in my dream last night.
Perhaps you don’t have such dreams.
Perhaps you’ve never been savage yourself,
never let savagery rip through you
like a cleaver through meat. But what about
what you said to your sister, on the steps of that
kindergarten. That was savage. You knew,
didn’t you? You felt it, didn’t you feel it
at your desk, minutes later? Her fear
in your gut as you raised your hand, raced past
the cafeteria—boiling greens, groping
cutout hands. They knew what I’d done.
I can’t not have done it now.
Washing Her Hair
I warm the lather
in my palm,
dampen the fine, last
strands—all she has
left—to encourage
the suds, then
rinse, fold them
over my hand
(the way I’ll hold
the fading paper
wreath she
made in first grade,
and lay it in its box)
and brush,
from the ends up,
gently, so as to lose
not one strand.
A Gate
I have oared and grieved,
grieved and oared,
treading a religion
of fear. A frayed nerve.
A train wreck tied to the train
of an old idea.
Now, Lord, reeling in violent
times, I drag these tidal
griefs to this gate.
I am tired. Deliver
me, whatever you are.
Help me, you who are never
near, hold what I love
and grieve, reveal this green
evening, myself, rain,
drone, evil, greed,
as temporary. Granted
then gone. Let me rail,
revolt, edge out, glove
to the grate. I am done
waiting like some invalid
begging in the nave.
Help me divine
myself, beside me no Virgil
urging me to shift gear,
change lane, sing my dirge
for the rent, torn world, and love
your silence without veering
into rage.
Deleted Scene: Last Day
I’m sorry, my sister says. I’m sorry it’s taking so long.
You must be bored to death.
Elegy for a Church-Key
(Setsuko Hara, 1920–2015)
When Setsuko Hara sips a beer
in Early Summer (or Late Spring)
in that static tatami shot, we know she’s going
to tip the balance, leave her father.
It’s early summer or late spring.
Barbecue days, years before the ring-tab.
My father leaves his cigarette balanced on a can.
Ashes fizz the dregs of beer.
Years before the ring-tab, barbecue years.
The church-key of childhood cracks open the can.
Ashes fizz the dregs of beer.
My father opens a beer, ghosts foam the holes.
A film can cracks: a church-key childhood opens.
I like beer, Noriko says. (I’ve seen this before.)
Ghosts open beers, fathers foam the holes.
Those fathers are gone. The church-keys lost.
I’ve seen this before, Noriko says.
(Her name is Noriko in both of these movies.)
The church-key is lost. That father gone.
Loss is loss, what matters the movie?
Her name is Noriko in both of these movies
Setsuko Hara still sipping her beer.
Loss is loss, what matters the movie?
Nothing is static in a tatami shot.
Trailer
[Some Language, Some Death, Some Prayer, Some War]
FADE IN:
INT. LIVING ROOM—DAY
A couch. Table with medications, tissues, cough drops. A TV
VOICE-OVER
In a world of . . .
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM—INDETERMINATE TIME
Men and women on couches. Table with coffee urn, tea, graham crackers. A TV
Philip Glass music UNDER. TV news UNDER.
A woman, holding a tissue, walks to the table.
<
br /> WOMAN
Do you want decaf?
CUT TO:
INT. CHURCH—DAY
Statue of Virgin Mary overlooking rows of lit candles.
Philip Glass music UNDER. Praying voices UNDER.
VOICE-OVER
Based on the true story of . . .
DISSOLVE TO:
INT.BED BATH & BEYOND—DAY
Aisle of glass containers. A woman wheels a cart.
VOICE-OVER
Will she find it in time?
CUT TO:
INT.DOCTOR’S OFFICE—DAY
Room lit by overhead fluorescent. Woman seated on examination table.
Man and Woman standing on either side.
VOICE-OVER
Featuring the award-winning star of
“Third Grade” and “Christmas at Nanna’s”
CUT TO:
INT. KITCHEN—NIGHT
One light on. Two women, one seated. Camera lingers on them then
PANS TO a CLOSE-UP of a clock. 3:10.
CUT TO:
EXTREME CLOSE-UP of one woman’s face.
Philip Glass music UNDER.
CUT TO:
CLOSE-UP of clock. 3:14
VOICE-OVER
In a shocking twist, the . . .
CUT TO:
Marginalia
I love to find a stranger’s marker limn
the margin of some argument—a girl,
I imagine, trapped in a grim
assignment, my sister, perhaps, arm
dangling over the bed edge trying to nail
the main point, beating the sluggish animal
of her attention, asleep again,
me opposite, her anagram,
more rearrangement than mirror, a gnarl
of complaint, hitched to some grail
far from her as now I limn
her words in the margin
of Kierkegaard: no justice to be found in
the physical world. Her words? Rag
of some teacher’s gloss? Inscrutable mail
from my dear one two months dead.
;
Bird-Watching
Perhaps it’s habit,
an itch
for God, this watching—
heart? spirit?— dart
twist, braid
itself into a chain
of waiting.
You can’t drag
spirit, force a hatch,
but must wait—
no branch
to grab. No rag
to wring.
You must abide.
Abide?
O heart, hang
on your twig,
rant
your raw song.
Something’s taken wing.
Some bandit
left me this grid of rain.
;
Notes
“The Extra”: Quotes are from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
“The Port”: This poem began as my response to Diane Seuss’s initial stanza in a sestina contest judged by David Lehman for The American Scholar.
“Movie” is for my brother Gregg Masini.
“Water Lilies”: This series was inspired by Monet’s Les Nymphéas in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. John Berger quotes are from his essay “Claude Monet.”
“Tracking Shot: Subway Lines”: This collage of phrases is made out of signs and ads in a subway car.
“Migraine”: In his study Migraine, Oliver Sacks explores the phenomenon as both neurological structure and emotional strategy, a cinematographic series of flickering stills being one of its many sensory manifestations. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was a Benedictine mystic, composer, visionary, and scientist.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the following publications in which these poems first appeared:
Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day: “A Gate”; Best American Poetry: “Anxieties” (originally in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day); Cortland Review: “Movie”; H.O.W.: “A Fable,” “Trying to Understand Irony,” “Watching the Six-Part Pride and Prejudice, Mid-Chemo, with My Sister”; Ploughshares: “Waiting Room”; Poetry: “Mind Screen”; Provincetown Arts: “Tracking Shot: Subway Lines”; Referential: “Revolve,” “Storylines”; SITES: Translating Trump: “The Blob”; Village Voice: “The Lights Go Down at the Angelika”
;
Thank you Marie Howe, Jan Heller Levi, Catherine Barnett and Kim Addonizio for your steady spirits, poem by poem.
For thoughtful readings and suggestions, thank you Mark Doty, Michael Klein, Medrie MacPhee, Daniel Mendelsohn, Honor Moore, Brittany Perham, Robert Polito, Victoria Redel, Martha Rhodes, James Stoeri and Alexander Stille.
Thank you Ghislaine Boulanger, Roger Celestin, Elisa D’Arrigo, Lynne Greenberg, Gail Hochman, Walter Mosley, Karen Backus, Stephen Simcock, and Drew Weitman.
Jill Bialosky, once again, so much gratitude.
To Civitella Ranieri, grazie, grazie, grazie.
Love and gratitude to my parents, to Paul Weinstein and Mallory Kusterer; and to Ryan, for the joy you brought us in a terrible time.
Also by Donna Masini
That Kind of Danger
About Yvonne
Turning to Fiction
Copyright © 2018 by Donna Masini
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Title: 4:30 movie : poems / Donna Masini.
Other titles: Four thirty movie
Description: First Edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2018] |
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Identifiers: LCCN 2018004875 | ISBN 9780393635508 (hardcover)
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Water Lilies 1
Here the weariest
come to rest
in the swirl
of light and time and water
water and air
blues, teals
a twisting wisteria
seems to wrestle
the trellis
of its own trail
tier on tier
climbing its wires
of air
After the war
in his atelier
a fog, a silt
filming each iris
Monet twisted the laws
of landscape and paint to raise
the real
into a kind of stairwell
to tease
his Parisians out of the sterile
trials of war
to rest
not to erase
but ease
let them stare
and stare
Water Lilies 2
trying to sit
at the rail
of my attention, wait
(what can I take for later?)
(in the bookstore, retail
retail!)
(outside the swelter)
six hours behind me my sister lies
in a tangle of wires
and sweat
can’t eat, then rallies, ti
res
In a week I’ll
open a book: Art
I’ll give her Art
prayer, the clinical trials
and all
will
be well
all
will be all
will will will
too late
in a year she will
(this can’t be real)
Later
when I buy myself a sweater
I buy one for her as well
Water Lilies 3
After the allies
after the serial
trials
the lies
his real
aim was to make a
“pond that remembers all”
not to paint “it”
rather “the air
that touched it”
Water Lilies 4
Later
my sister became too ill
for the clinical trials
but there was a tease
around Easter
we could still
hope, more will
than possibility, a straw
false lease
I began to tell
her about the Water Lilies
watched her stare
at each panel as if I
were a merchant unfolding my wares
to make them so real
so literal
she might climb the tiers
of painted air the way lilies
rise
out of shit and silt
So Monet writ
his “terrible blizzard of loss that will
even erase
her features” John Berger writes
of the portrait of his young wife’s wrestle
with death; saw
painted light unlike the real
is not transparent—more a wall
and she, now, a corpse on an easel