In Accelerated Silence Brooke Matson (epub e reader .TXT) 📖
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- Author: Brooke Matson
Book online «In Accelerated Silence Brooke Matson (epub e reader .TXT) 📖». Author Brooke Matson
Where?
he demands There I say and point
but already it’s mist
THERE IS A ROOM IN THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM
where candlelight warms our winter bed
and moon-white hips trace ellipses
around the sun of your skin.
There is a kitchen embedded
in the fibers of time
where your chest trembles
under my hands as a soup pot rattles
on the stove. In the dark
theatre of space, amateur actors
unravel Shakespeare, and as the lights
go down I lean
into your lips as shadows lean
into walls. An entryway exists
where your index finger traces
the boundary of my jaw as I slide
into sleep, as if to unlatch
its gate and enter. Enter
an entire hall—longer than a light-year—
where our knees touch
under tables
and the clinking of glasses glitters
like newly born stars. The corner booth
of our first shared smile
waits heavy with wine, bold as a planet
charting its arc. The entire house
is ours—it is always ours.
IV
ELEGY IN THE FORM OF PORCELAIN
winter is a prism in reverse / colors
reassembling into white
snow that illumines
the morning / kisses the dark
needles of pine / the season
before his death / it crusted the patio
like porcelain from plates I split
against it
months later in my rage / all the delicate
flowers arranged in jagged blue
and alabaster triangles / a kaleidoscope
of edges / fine powder
lost between them / the drifting debris
of dead stars / what I mean is
I loved the brushstrokes
at the corners of his eyes / little hairline
fissures / I mean
we are more than our breaks / what cannot
be reconstructed from the bang
or the plate before / spinning like a galaxy
across the porch
SONNET IN THE HIGGS FIELD
I force my heft against an unseen fence
every morning just to climb out of bed
Each limb lead-heavy as if fighting tar
a drag that scientists call mass and I
call massive depression A relentless
resistance as when skiing on the lake
the raft flipped and I did not release the
rope but clutched it harder felt my bones moan
against the force of water a translucent
field of green where trout parted like rays
of light against my ribs and snagged the cold
space of silence When at last I let go
I became weightless afraid a buoyant
breathless particle nameless on the waves
ODE TO A FRACTURED CONCH
You could have been home
to a hermit crab
when I spied you in the sand
imagining you whole—
inspiration for a poem
about fractals
I dreamt the night before
of Mandelbrot’s prime numbers
repeated
in a man’s curls
each of which represented a proportion
of the universe
telescoping upon
its verb
a golden chorus played over
and over
You breathe
water in my hand
throat
cracked through
salt and empty rooms
No evidence of the voice
I was taught to listen to as a child
Can you hear it
my sister insisted
pressing the cool
lip to my ear until I was sure
I could
I believed it was that easy
to commune with the dead
our songs
wound within us like a spool
of string from which
one could reconstruct
the chorus of our origin
But the silence segmented
in the stairwell
sentence of your body
is somehow
expected
as when walking among the infinite
arms of ferns
later this afternoon
I will find a dead house finch
its breast peeled
back like a husk of corn
ELEGY IN THE FORM OF STEAM
The teakettle quiets before it whistles
and in that breath I recall
the way your hands did simple tasks
with great intention: crushing garlic
with the thick ball of your palm,
stirring soup like it could be injured.
Making the bed, you took your time
smoothing the crease of the top sheet
like soil over newly planted seeds.
The weight of your hand at rest
comforted the silver handle
as you waited for a shrill scream
to cloud the air, a confirmation
of what was real. I grasp
its slender shoulder, lift its body
from the burner. My contents
falter as its cry
falls cold.
METAMORPHOSIS
i. Cocoon
Your mother smoothed the paper
of your face when she believed you were asleep,
wandered into hospital corners to tuck
her tears between glossy magazines.
And now spring licks this side of the earth
and all the rooted, leaf-winged creatures
remember their past lives in the sun.
Green beaks thrust through loam, yawn
for light and dew. You begged me
not to watch your skeleton emerge
from your skin, having witnessed
your father’s metamorphosis
at only seventeen. But see
how the soil writhes:
a menagerie of vibrant plumes, supple stalks
splitting into peonies.
See how the cells of your brain become
clouds of cottonwood seed
adrift in the humid heat.
ii. Luna
More animal than insect. More mouse
than moth.
Abdomen long as a robin. Wings
ragged as tissue paper.
It crawled through the cedar shards
of the flowerbed under the amber porch light.
A few steps, double-back,
and it was gone.
I was twelve and breasts
budded under my shirt.
I lay awake.
Under the blinds
the sky beat with the color of sinew,
the glistening shade of lip
and tongue, the shiny intestines of the starling
our cat left coiled
on the doorstep. The moon slid
higher in the frame. I knew
there were spaces inside us
that ache toward light.
iii. Lacuna
When people ask, How are you?
my mouth fills with flannel.
How are you doing?
they ask, and I touch the fragile arm
of the sugar bowl
or rather, the hollow
inside its porcelain elbow
where your finger nested
in half-formed thought.
The teakettle howls silver
like a wounded fox
and sometimes I let it howl
until the cat hides under the armchair
because that’s when your hand
would relieve it. I wash the rubbered skin
of a bell pepper, cut away the spire
of seeds that scatter
in the sink, hollow its reddened ribs
to a carcass
warm enough to crawl inside.
V
HOW TO EAT A POMEGRANATE
After Sarah Koenig
Don’t think about the consequences.
Let the primal need to know
fill you with salt. You will carry its tight
belly in the pocket of your coat
for three days, embrace the weight
of the question—a ripe confession,
a reticent guest. I know
you’d rather have a simple task—
fruit with a softened peel, puckered cheek
that yields to a dull edge.
But that’s not why you’re here.
If this is sacrifice, don’t dilute
the amplitude of the act.
One muscled blow
will sling your skin with magenta.
When you begin, an absence
will open at the back of your throat
the way an astronaut entering space feels the floor
fall away. Don’t hesitate.
Use your hands
to scrape the seeds like answers
to your tongue. You will lap
jelly from your palms, bend your fingernails
backward with asking. Do not be ashamed
of the bold carpet stain—
red, relentless proof.
ELEGY IN THE FORM OF A BUTTERFLY BUSH
I pared the boughs back every few months
to keep the twigs from scraping shingles
on the southern side of the shed. Hummingbirds
would make their spry appearances, flit
through sprigs of lilac, vanish
when the
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