Our Andromeda

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by Brenda Shaughnessy


  I said already. Someone’s

  not listening. Someone’s

  eating breakfast or falling

  asleep or texting a married lover

  as shrinks are wont to do.

  If I am boring then at least

  I am getting somewhere:

  through the wood I knock on.

  My story is telling.

  But it’s not telling me.

  I need help getting to the next part.

  When I open my mouth,

  liquid rushes in, endrunkening.

  When I close it,

  dark, secret-looking drops spill

  crimson on the page.

  Headlong

  Be strange to yourself,

  in your love, your grief.

  Your wet eyelashes a black

  fringe on brown pain

  and your feet unbelievably

  sure, somehow, surfing

  your own shadow,

  that too-large one cresting

  just now, too soon for you

  to get inside the curl:

  the one place in the ocean

  where it’s safe. And safe

  only for a half-breath

  (a fish’s sip with

  hooked lip),

  only for that one blink

  of an eye already shut (tiptoe

  to the foreshadow) against

  the headlong wall of salt water.

  To My Twenty-Three-Year-Old Self

  The woman you think

  Is the love of your life

  Is only a way to get

  To New York City.

  I probably shouldn’t

  Say that until she leaves

  You. Because you will

  Hate me if I say it now.

  You “love” “her” so

  Much. You are lavishing

  A lifetime of unexpressed love

  On this poor expressionless

  Child. She can barely feel.

  And you, you narcissist,

  You can only feel yourself.

  If you really loved her,

  You would try to help her.

  But in the end, I’m glad

  You spent your energies

  Writing love poems and

  Trying to transform your love

  Into art. It worked out

  For you. FSG will buy it

  Even though it’s juvenile.

  You’d believe that before

  You’d believe she’ll leave you.

  In six weeks. Without a trace.

  Saying: You don’t know who

  You are. And besides you’re not

  Butch enough for me.

  As if you wouldn’t make yourself

  Into anything for her.

  Had she only said she wanted it.

  Luckily for you, she didn’t.

  To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self

  You wouldn’t know me,

  If I came to you in a dream.

  You’d be sleeping

  It off, you’d be naked

  And cute, but you think

  You’re a kind of monster

  And maybe you are,

  Just not an ugly one.

  That whole business

  Will come later.

  You’d pass me on the street

  As well, a “normal,”

  Someone who traded

  In her essentials for

  A look of haunted

  Responsibility.

  Someone who was maybe

  Once a girl you’d know.

  I would want to tell

  You that romance

  Was a kind of civilization

  That fell. I cannot

  Explain the complex

  Strategies in that bitter

  Defeat, not that I

  Fathom it, except to say

  That we are all haunted.

  You too, in your wild love

  And fear. You are a monster.

  I am not a dream.

  To My Twenty-Five-Year-Old Self

  Billy Collins, have you any

  Idea how important

  You were to my twenty-five-year-

  Old self? You weren’t

  Poet laureate yet, you

  Were just a teacher I had

  In Ireland. You were

  Expansive and you

  Believed in me.

  I felt like a real poet

  With you for the first

  Time even though we

  Argued about feminism

  And things that mattered.

  I was just at that cusp

  Of being someone who wanted

  So desperately to write,

  Tipping over into becoming a writer.

  I was fighting it. I didn’t know

  How to be except angry.

  I was frightened. What if I

  Could be good? What if

  I would never be good?

  Would your attention

  Be all I’d ever really have

  Of poetry? How could I know?

  And so I was angry at you.

  And between the lesbian

  Love I’d left in New York

  Who, I’m grateful, convinced

  Me to buy contact lenses

  So I could see the green

  Hills, and the British physicist

  I’d end up in bed with

  Before I’d left Ireland,

  There was something pure

  And aboveboard, not teacherly

  But generous, and lovely

  And incomplete and no

  One thing. I won’t forget it:

  The way you laughed

  At some mean joke, at some

  Ugly truth, into the wind

  So it blew back into our happy,

  Stupid faces on a ferry made me understand,

  This is love the way poets know it.

  To My Thirty-Eight-Year-Old Self

  Calvin will be fine,

  I want to say

  To this woman who

  Is one year older than me.

  To tell her: You may still

  Not be able to tell,

  But he will catch up,

  And fit into the category

  Of “normal” and we’ll

  Both laugh at ourselves,

  Who never imagined

  Normal as a good thing

  For anybody, much less

  A beautiful, innocent

  Baby. Who has a real

  Chance at being magnificent.

  She’ll say what

  Did we know…we were

  So worried. Still though,

  If anyone ever makes

  Fun of him, calls him

  Stupid or a spaz

  Or anything, I’m sure

  Even our eighty-five-year-old

  Self, we at our big

  Wisdom-apex age,

  Will vivisect that anyone

  With a grapefruit spoon.

  We’ll laugh, but then

  She’ll turn to me and say:

  But you’re from the past.

  You’re just me last year.

  You don’t know

  Any more than I do.

  In fact, she’ll say,

  Backing away,

  You know even less.

  You’re fucking with me.

  Then she won’t let me

  Touch her or say another

  Word. So what was

  The point of my coming here?

  The New People

  I had no desire to get to know the screamers,

  our loud-in-ten-ways, annoying, drunk and boorish

  neighbors, but I didn’t put up

  a fence or anything. Didn’t fight it

  when they brought us plates of their fatty meals

  and overlong chitchat. We were new,

  just renting, and I didn’t want to be rude,

  either, when Joanna and Vince

  brought us
their statue of the Virgin Mary

  when our newborn son was in the hospital.

  Joanna had tears in her eyes and though I am not

  Catholic, or even Christian—or not

  anymore anyway, I think, if it’s like what I suppose

  in that you have to keep up with the dues

  to stay in the club—

  I accepted the statue. I took in the alien

  mother and wrapped her in a blanket.

  I lay her on a low shelf and broke

  the news to my Jewish husband, who cringed

  and said, “She gave you what?”

  But I didn’t care

  what it was, from what god or goddess

  or neighbor or creature or kiln.

  I was becoming someone I didn’t know

  each day without my little boy—near insanity

  about his tiny, pure, hurt self. All those wires.

  Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God,

  Holy Statue in my baby’s silent room, I promise

  I will believe in you, and in Jesus too. Please…

  Why was I cradling a “mother” statue,

  a ceramic doll, this creepy relic,

  instead of my living, beautiful son?

  If she could make it all the way here,

  across so many territories of indifference,

  into my most secret empty room—

  surely my child, who belonged, would come home soon?

  If You So Much As Lay a Hand

  What can I possibly understand

  holding on to the idea that he is mine?

  Denying the fact that he’s really being passed

  from hand of the living to hand of the dead

  above my head

  in a game of keep-away

  in which I am not the mother who makes

  the rules and has her say

  but the target, who makes them all laugh

  at my attempts to stay light-

  hearted, game, so the teasing

  doesn’t turn more vicious.

  If some clumsy god drops him

  or forgets to wind up his breath

  enough to last the whole night

  or if some irritated hand swats him away

  like a fly, I will replace my life

  with blood sport, wild to find that arm,

  the tendoned shoulder, the loose fist of that god,

  aim for his face, his expression. I will see it.

  See whether he equals in horror

  my child’s beauty.

  Whether there is light in his eyes,

  or envy. If there are such hands,

  such a brutal face

  to my son’s luck or unluck.

  The words flog and flay and no mercy

  come to mind, like some maniac order

  divinity believes only it can give,

  or dissolve like a membrane

  between world and love.

  A jellyfish can find, in water,

  the air it needs

  to keep the poison ready. Even if

  this god is not some creature,

  with creature-logic

  and animal heft, but only an idea

  the breath forms from death,

  from a random plot of book or land,

  not man or kind of man,

  if I so much as see the shadow

  of that hand.

  Nachträglichkeit

  after Kaja Silverman’s

  Flesh of My Flesh

  On having slashed myself from throat to instep

  in one unbroken line,

  I suppose it was a reenactment, Freud’s Nachträglichkeit:

  the second act. The past presses so hard

  on the present, the present is badly bruised,

  blood brims under the skin.

  That was the situation I was in. Wearing a jacket of blood

  from an earlier crime,

  which was also mine. A curving zipper with misaligned

  teeth, open to show red lipstick,

  meat. And a stage smile, have a seat! Normally I’m much

  more careful, naturally something

  like this would only ever happen in a dream,

  but even dreams have their dreams

  of finding their dreamer awake, silent within earshot,

  carving knife in hand.

  Did you know that anguish thins the blood and thickens

  the vessel? It was like cutting

  a rare steak. A minotaur, glittering with rubies

  and pink candles. My hands hung

  like electrical wires off a building on the edge of collapse,

  every one of my gestures symbolic,

  ruined of magic. For there is no miraculous beast,

  and there never was, standing

  on the golden field of frozen honey clover,

  each leaf strong enough to bend

  under everything’s weight. Strong because it bends.

  Because it has already been crushed,

  but its cells know that blight, one massive cut,

  will slit each tiny skin surgically

  in order to save the field from itself. I cannot suffer

  the same fate twice, force my own hand

  or stay it. Can’t repeat or unrepeat. This finitude

  is infinite and infinitely expanding.

  Hearth

  Love comes from ferocious love

  or a ferocious lack of love, child.

  A to and a from, and an urgency,

  a barefoot sprint in the high snow

  for the only sagging shack in sight.

  No doctor runs through the winter

  woods at midnight to bring placebo.

  But when he does it’s just too late—

  the house all fevered, grief the very

  gifts of milk and stew and hearth

  offered anyhow. How many tree

  limbs are amputated by the self-

  important sudden surgery of a gale—

  those same limbs tortured further,

  re-galed, as spirit-dancing fire?

  But the trees don’t experience it

  the way it seems to me, like how

  all that individual snow clumps

  together because it is lonely

  and trusts its kind. To be home

  is to go somewhere, is velocity,

  the same urgent comfort

  of your name. You’ll lack nothing,

  child, and I will never let you go.

  Hide-and-Seek with God

  There are no hiding places left, Cal.

  Every dark space isn’t really dark

  but pinkish black, flesh and oblivion,

  filled with me, with us, deathly

  and breathless and holding on, skin

  about to split and give us away.

  Is it better to run? Run down

  the street—the floating red hand

  that means don’t walk looks

  like a heart. But I’m too afraid.

  If we just close our eyes truly enough,

  believing hard, no peeking, we can

  be invisible. Don’t let him find

  us, Cal. Don’t let him find us again.

  Our Andromeda

  When we get to Andromeda, Cal,

  you’ll have the babyhood you deserved,

  all the groping at light sockets

  and putting sand in your mouth

  and learning to say Mama and I want

  and sprinting down the yard

  as if to show me how you were leaving

  me for the newest outpost of Cal.

  You’ll get the chance to walk

  without pain, as if such a thing

  were a matter of choosing a song

  over a book, of napping at noon

  instead of fighting it. You’ll have

  the chance to fight every nap,

  every grown-up decision that bugs

  you, and it will b
e a fair fight, this time,

  Cal, in Andromeda. You will win.

  •

  In Andromeda there would be no

  sleepy midwife who doesn’t know

  her own weakness, no attending

  nurse who defers like a serf

  to the sleepy midwife, no absent

  obstetrician, no fetal heart monitor

 

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