Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World Kathryn Cowles (english readers txt) 📖

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Say there’s a man out the window or

a cat scratching the door

like a strange man

and no telephone,

no way to call out

or fish guts spilled straight

into the Aegean

farther up the beach

or that our skin can burn

can glare sunward so and scratch.

True, paper-eating bugs

have got in the paper paintings

mold in our pillows, rough sheeting

and that we’ve got to leave

on the ferry on Tuesday,

out with the tide,

but don’t say it say instead

love, I love you you sleepyhead get up

get up get up

the sun is.

TRANSCRIPT OF BIRDS, CONTINUED

[second bird:]---------

[to its mother]

[mother gives it some food]

---------

---------

[chews, no swallows, whole]

[1 and 2 sit] [patiently] [wait]

[mother hands it to the black bird

w/ the orange on its face]

[you’ve got to hand it to her]

THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE WE HAVE TO LEAVE

From high above, I take three photographs of the same view of the terraces leading to Chrysopigi: whitewashed church on the peninsula-turned-island, its once-neck cracked by God away from the mainland to save monks under attack. Also it is beautiful, this our everyday view from breakfast, and also it is completely ordinary.

I want to commit it to memory. I want to commit it to memory. The photographs slip in place of memory, metaphors for the actual landscape. Transubstantiation. Out of my hands. I sit and watch.

Plain

I AM ON A PLANE

Have I been

on a plane

the greater part

of the day?

I believe I have.

I fall asleep.

I wake up still

on a plane.

I see the sun out

the window I shut

the window shade I go

to sleep. I wake up.

Still on a plane.

I see the moon halved

in the sky in the late

afternoon the same day.

I spend time off the plane

buying food and killing time

till the next plane leaves

and leave it must

and I on it still

I go to sleep.

*

I am asleep on the plane

next to the coffee machines

and I wake up smelling

burnt coffee on hot plates.

I am still on the plane.

The lady dispensing

the coffee is

halfway down the plane

and I am at the end.

Sometimes they start

at the end

but this is not

one of those times.

I go to sleep.

*

I wake up maybe

five minutes later

maybe an hour

maybe we are almost there and

the lady with the coffee

is two rows off,

has she passed me by

once already, asleep,

and come for a second round or

have I been sleeping

for just five minutes.

I don’t know.

I open the shade halfway.

Tops of clouds.

*

I wake up and my throat is parched

it feels as though the adjustable air hole

has been blowing directly on

my throat

the lady offers me

pretzels peanuts or cookies

I choose peanuts

she gives me two packages

12 g each, calories from fat 60

well and good

but I am so thirsty.

*

I’m on a plane and

the woman next to me

has a project.

She is tearing the pages

of a magazine

into smaller pieces,

maybe to mark pages

in a book, maybe

for some other reason

but I am trying to sleep

and I am trying to sleep.

The lady puts the torn paper

in her purse

for later use.

*

I try objectifying

the flight attendants.

This is not as fun

as one might think.

And a guy gets up into

the middle of the aisle

and begins his mild

calisthenics

bend, stretch, arms up,

bend, toe touch,

arms up,

rolls his head.

*

The overhead bins

of some sizes of planes

are too small for roller

carry-ons so nothing fits

and this is one of those

sizes of planes,

I am row 37

and my bag is row 28,

had to move all

the plastic-wrapped

blankets to fit it,

over there, I keep thinking,

remember to remember

you are missing parts.

*

Am I getting anywhere?

I must be

if slowly, if bit by bit,

an act of faith

hurtling through the sky

500 miles an hour or more

I put myself in someone else’s

hands, nod off, even,

and when I wake

the solid surface of clouds below

looks like a landing pad

in this light.

FARM PLOT

Even looking up, it is flat.

Sky stretched tight just

above the trees, great white lid

flat screen projected with

the movie of a sky (no plot)

great white parallel lines, sky, snowy ground,

a whole house gone blank as if caught between mirrors, smaller and smaller.

Sky pieced with light clouds brown white

washed blue new floodwater

and I can tell I am in Ohio just by the sky and

the parallel horizons line up thusly, mathematical:

huge cloud line, pieced top, like reflected farm plots then

thin line of bright horizon and

then the ground.

INTERVIEW

You love your west. Your home.

I do.

Your rocks. Your landscape.

My mountains. My mountains.

So why do you want to work in Ohio?

I have a job in Ohio.

That simple?

Oh I would not say simple. Rock

is simple. Sand in the desert is. My job

in Ohio is not.

And how is Ohio different?

Ohio is not different.

When you say different do you mean

from itself or from other landscapes?

You said different.

I said different?

Look at the transcript.

So I did.

What I mean is that Ohio is the same as itself.

That seems clear.

In Ohio, I cannot tell field from field. I drive

past a field and cannot find

a mark to differentiate it

from other fields. I have no mountains

to orient my map,

I have no map in my head to begin with, only stops

on the route, as with a subway line.

You have no cardinal directions?

No scope. No freeway ramp

high enough to see it from.

High enough for landscape, you mean?

Not nearly landscape.

Could a ladder help?

Perhaps a ladder. Perhaps

I could use a very tall ladder. To take it all in.

LAY OF THE LAND

Listen: train, train.

It goes low, high

the high part lasts longer

low

low, high.

Cool window air

feet height

when I am on my bed.

On my radio

a dead guy sings.

Let’s say it doesn’t bother me.

Let’s say there’s no breeze

and I open the window.

Let’s say no breeze I look out the window.

What does one do the land is flat.

No where for a breeze to start.

I am tired.

It takes more here to walk a dog.

*

A grocery store.

A gas station.

And Upground Reservoir,

built on the old quarry

where they removed the rock,

and Riverbend Park,

the prettiest spot in town but so flat

I can’t tell which direction

the water is going.

Cooper Tires.

A cemetery, then the city edge,

line of trees

field field silo with an eagle

painted on its side

then a plain old silo then 12 more

exactly like it

another cemetery.

National Lime and Stone you can’t see

from the freeway

Benton Ridge Sewage Lagoon

you also can’t see

and the hole they dug

to