by Paige Lewis
and pebble-dented. Reaching in, I pulled
back empty fists and it always seemed
like a trick, those tadpoles all green-glinting
and shadows. My brother could catch
them, could make the squirming real
in his palm before he swallowed each whole.
We are only remembered as cruel when
what we harm does not die quickly. I
don’t know how long it took the tadpoles,
but I know I was trying to say I’m sorry
when I leaned down, pressed my mouth
against his stomach and said, If you’d
just let me catch you, I’d let you go.
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED
I MADE MYSELF
your paperweight. This seems
wrong. Seems like a sign that I need
to spend more time on my own, so I
call my friend and drive him to the store
full of overpriced healing stones. I want
the women shopping to know I’m not
with my friend. I want them to know
how great I’m doing with my adventures
in independence. I’m ready to shout,
Look at my healthy new life! But my friend
thinks it’s a bad idea to frighten people
in a place with so many hard throwables.
Would they hurt me? These women
look as if they’d smell like pink magnolias
and violin rosin if I got close enough,
but I won’t. I’m too busy searching for
the stone that best represents me—it’s
not the blue one specked with God bits,
or the ear-shaped obsidian. It’s
not anything polished—and I think
about how hard it is for me to believe
in the first Adam because if Adam
had the power to name everything,
everything would be named Adam.
Then I think, That’s a pretty smart thought.
I don’t say it to my friend. I don’t say it
to the magnolia women. Do they still
count, these hours I’ve spent on my
own? Do they still count if I’m saving
all of my shiniest thoughts for you?
GOD’S SECRETARY,
OVERWORKED
Get real, darling. If He answered all prayers
you’d be dead five times over. And I don’t
mean the men you left just wished you were
gone, I mean they scraped holes in your photos
and kneeled in front of votive candles, begging
for you to sleep between the tracks and train.
One even asked for you to appear in his bed
still wet from the lake. And while I’m not one to name
names, you should be grateful that God
doesn’t work like that. Listen, I’ve got children
in car wrecks and old folks in hospice to call on,
but take my advice and stop asking for men’s
forgiveness. It’s a dangerous demonstration.
If you offer a sorry mouth, they’ll break it.
PAVLOV WAS THE
SON OF A PRIEST
which is a biographical fact only ever stated
when discussing a man of either unrivaled
righteousness or extreme wickedness.
Imagine this: he never once used a bell
in his saliva experiments, unless you count
the plink of kibble falling from his dogs’
surgically opened throats, and why would
you count that? I admit I often tell you
about the cruelties of others to stifle
the growling in my own troubled core. I
sense something is about to happen, though
I can’t tell you what because last night,
after I prophesized that a man would steal
the Smithsonian’s rare and hideous pumpkin
diamonds, I had no fun at all crouching
behind the museum’s display cases until
the night guard carried us out by our ears.
She told you, Treat your mouth less
like a garbage chute. She told me, Forget
what you think you know about space. But I
only really know about its violence. I forget
that the moon smells like spent gunpowder.
I forget what would happen to your body
in a black hole. I don’t forget your body.
This would be unforgivable, and I have
so many strikes against me already. I’m sorry
I couldn’t hide my joy when you said lonely.
It made me feel useful. I used to be aimless—
swallowing marbles and clicking my way
through cities, licking my thumbs to smooth
the eyebrows of almost any man. Now, I
demand a love that is stupid and beautiful,
like a pilot turning off her engines midflight
to listen for rain on wings. I want to find
you a peach so ripe that even your breath
would bruise it. I want to press its velvet
heat against your cheek, make you edge
into the bite until your mouth is too wet
to ask questions. If something happens,
let it. I admit I couldn’t hear the thief’s
footsteps over the museum alarm, but
I’m certain that if the diamonds jostling
against ugly diamonds in his drawstring
bag sounded like anything, they sounded
like bells.
DIORAMA OF OUR NEED TO
ESCAPE THE COLD WE MAKE
My beloved steadies my balance on the outer wall
of the zoo. He says that even in their sleep, captive giraffes
know they’re captive—They don’t make that midnight hum
in the wild. He wants to connect these stemmy-necked
leopards to my crooning, but it’s only noon. He reaches
up, pokes his finger through the sun, and spirals it into
an apple’s dizzy peel. Now red. Now waxy. He
ribbons it through his lips. See, he says. His singed
mouth. We’ve grown so big. It’s time we got out of here.
I don’t want out, but I do grow cold, and the cold
comes strong—and the dark. The streetlights
are stubborn here—they decide when to light,
it will not be decided for them. The humming swells
so loud I can only focus on everything my beloved is not.
He is not me from the future—his pockets aren’t
filled with space dust. He is not God—he still needs
my help unsnagging his hair from jacket zippers.
Where are we going? He rips a hole into the side
of the wall. He squeezes my hand, leading me in
through the hollow and out beside a mountain, which
has only us to confide in. It says, I am very thin
and not fit to hold you. We climb it anyway. The mountain
teeters and falls back, flattening the town below.
My beloved calls it An Exceptional Wreck. He feeds flint
to a hawk and sends it sparking over the fields. I don’t
understand his bigness, or his dreamy definition of guilt,
and I don’t argue. I used up my toothiness years ago—
rendered myself kind. And besides, he’s teaching me
confinement. How to feel the fences. When he
pulls me toward the fire, he pulls me by my wrist.
MAGIC
SHOW
The magician pulls handkerchiefs from her throat
until the rope of knotted silk ends, and she—
she keeps going, her tongue pressed down
to make room for what comes next: swords,
of course, each one longer t
han the one before.
Then a live Doberman that limps offstage, soaked
and shivering. For a moment, the magician’s parted lips
reveal only darkness, but she reaches in and brings
forth a crystal chandelier with its candles still lit.
I watch for years, surviving off what she coughs up:
pheasants and scalloped potatoes on silver trays,
deboned salmon slabs. I’m not sure if her belly
shrinks because she takes everything out, or
because she lets nothing in, but I’m grateful for her
dedication. For the pastel Easter basket, the kettle
of hawks instead of white doves, the fishbowl
and ceramic scuba diver who stands atop glow-
in-the-dark rocks, for the pay phone, the umbrellas,
ribbed and open, the top layer of frozen lake,
and the ice skates. For the twinkling music box,
and the green sweater I thought I’d lost in Michigan.
For the mattress and box spring I’m grateful,
though I’m the last one in the audience, and I
have seen enough. I tell her to stop, and she stops.
As she packs, I ask about the first object she ever
lifted from her mouth. She opens her traveling case
and shows me the jar of wisdom teeth she keeps
nestled between sequined vests. And this makes
sense, like how Earth refuses to release its pull
on the moon. Look, she says, look how full I was.
SO YOU WANT TO
LEAVE PURGATORY
Here, take this knife. Walk down
the road until you come across
a red calf in its pasture. It will
run toward you with a rope tied
around its neck. Climb over
the fence. Hold the rope like a leash.
You haven’t eaten in years. Think—
are you being tested? Yes, everything
here is a test. Stop baring teeth
upon teeth and leave the calf
to its grazing. Lift your arms toward
the sky and receive nothing. Keep
walking and think about the rope
around that calf’s neck. Consider
how fast its throat will be choked
by its own growing. Walk until you
understand what the knife was for.
Now forget it. Here, take this knife.
ROYAL I
My specific heart, know that I am king here.
I have my sword, my seat, and my passions
pinned to the royal bulletin board for all
to see. I’m a kind king, no skink’s ever shed
his blue tail in fear of me. I perform my tasks
bravely—just yesterday I sewed the flappy
lakes into place without thimble or worry
of prick. I’ve granted everyone the freedom
to eat dinner in bed, and I’ve rid the realm
of rats by reading their tiny diaries out loud
until they ran into the forests, red-cheeked
and babbling. I’m understandably busy,
so if I decide I no longer have time or want
for children, I expect an Alright, your brightness,
and for you to stop building our miniatures
out of pipe cleaners and meltwater. I’m kind.
I’m making love easy for everyone. It feels
exactly as the movies proclaimed. As king,
it’s my duty to be one with the universe,
but I hate how the galaxies hover over me,
expecting mistakes. And, my love, I might
make a few. It’s essential for me to trust, to tell
you that, if I lose my calm—if there comes a day
where I walk into a room and everyone finds
a corner to hide in, I’ll need you to be ready to
de-thorn the throne. My weaknesses are many
and stubborn. If you must strike, do so at night,
when I’m outside and alone and looking up.
NOTES
The first line of “Saccadic Masking” comes from Coulson Turnbull’s Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno (Gnostic Press, 1913).
The title “You Be You, and I’ll Be Busy” is inspired by the title of the poem “I’ll Be Me and You Be Goethe” by Heather Christle, which can be found in her collection What Is Amazing (Wesleyan, 2012).
In “Diorama of Ghosts,” the lines “when the dust is swept / the broom is stored / behind the door again” come from Saint Bernadette Soubirous who said, “The Virgin used me as a broom to remove the dust. When the work is done, the broom is put behind the door again.”
The firehouse light mentioned in “On Distance” is known as the Centennial Light. It is located in Livermore, California.
The final line of “God Stops By” comes from Rabbi Simcha Bunim Bonhart of Przysucha. One of his famous teachings is about how everyone should carry two notes with them. One note should read, “For my sake was the world created,” while the other note should read, “I am but dust and ashes.”
In “Turn Me Over, I’m Done on This Side,” the lines “The sea has its own soul, / and you have to ask permission to take a piece of it” come from Chiara Vigo, the last sea silk weaver. In a 2015 BBC News Magazine interview with Max Paradiso, Vigo says, “The sea has its own soul and you have to ask for permission to get a piece of it.”
In “I’ve Been Trying to Feel Bad for Everyone,” the painting referenced is The Virgin and Child with Saint Benedict from the Priory of St. Hippolytus of Vivoin. It’s located at the Musée de Tesse in Le Mans, France.
“God’s Secretary, Overworked” is inspired by the poem “The Frustrated Angel” by Jay Hopler, which is included in his book Green Squall (Yale, 2006).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the editors of the following publications where these poems first appeared, often in earlier versions:
Adroit Journal: “Diorama of Ghosts”
American Poetry Review: “I Love Those Who Can Walk Slow Over Glass and Still Keep,” “In the Hands of Borrowers, Objects Are Twice as Likely to Break”
Black Warrior Review: “Royal I”
Colorado Review: “I’ve Been Trying to Feel Bad for Everyone”
decomP: “Magic Show”
DIAGRAM: “Saccadic Masking”
Florida Review: “God’s Secretary, Overworked”
Indiana Review: “So You Want to Leave Purgatory”
The Journal: “Turn Me Over, I’m Done on This Side”
Los Angeles Review of Books: “You Be You, and I’ll Be Busy,” “No One Cares Until You’re the Last of Something”
Muzzle Magazine: “St. Francis Disrobes”
Ninth Letter: “The River Reflects Nothing”
Passages North: “When They Find the Ark”
Pleiades: “Diorama of Our Need to Escape the Cold We Make”
Ploughshares: “Pavlov Was the Son of a Priest”