Jac Nelson


LIBRARY POEMS

YELLOW BICYCLE AND GLASS what polemic what architecture … what polemic what architecture … what … what WAYWARD OR WINDOW IN THE NIGHT WARD, VIEW OF THE WET COMPLEX OR HAIRPINS LOST ON THE WAY indeed something – something which was in a shell which was in a shell (something like a pith, in a walnut shell, in the shell of κοσμός) – something had loved you. LANGOUROUS FLIGHT IN THE HUMANLESS MEADOW dead with light, dead with silence and wind, the boundaries of the fauna paths melt under the wide mouth of the vacuous heart.* *“heart” must stand in place of another word, which we don’t have, but by which we would understand something inside which is at once both a source of

emanation and a lake of return, or body of return, (though it is no lake, nor body, nor heart). THIS IS NOT A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED in an airplane, the tape rewinds, then runs forward again over itself. THE POET RUNS FROM THE POETIC EYE this poet – this deranged and naked lung, or Fury on panicked feet – this poet comes screaming out from some deprived envelope, waving briny hands, frantic, the poet has lost it, a lunatic. the Poetic Eye is an entirely different creature, a cold scanner, making: this object is not gray this object is not black draining:

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rescue trains 2-D ocean dropcloths ocean gray, black or like-darkness the Eye does drain and make gelatin prints the poet has gone screaming away from the prints, which look negative, like a planet under eclipse like an eclipse as it snuffs out the light SPARTA the king shared his tent with the Pythians who retrieved the oracles on state business the battlefield some footwork SOMEONE IS WATCHING, THE CANDLES ARE KEPT UNLIT, OR NO ONE IS WATCHING some kind of recovery keeps blowing by forest of books in the bed always what for forest of what for

is anything outside of the wood, casting its circle, what for SAID THE SKINNY BROWN-HAIRED CO-ED AT THE AVANT-GARDE PARTY LAST NIGHT: poetry is dying 1 ____________________________ 1 I will promise myself a few things for example, never to take a boundary as a limit, or to take a boundary as a delimiter, never to take a boundary as having any relationship to time or space, any certain relationship, any relationship to these which is determined outside of itself. that is, the boundary might have a relationship to time and space, but each relationship is specific to each boundary, it arises endergonically, moves outward from the boundary toward time and space, time and space accept this movement, they are accepting phenomena, or entities, they might be great machineries, which somehow can accept any kind of coupling, of linking, and here we [suddenly] might be talking about God, or Torah, how somehow before Creation, or maybe coming-to-being coincidental with Creation, created with Creation, or responding, but simultaneously, to the creation of Creation as Creation is created, that quality of God or Torah which is not Fate, nor Destiny, nor absence of “free will” – some kind of being locked into Space-Time – but rather an assurance that every interpretation, every exegesis,

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die … die … die … die … die … die … die … die … die … die … die … _________________________ every coupling, linking, every possibility, every way, is already a part of God, a part of Torah, a part of the great machinery of Time and Space, so that we are always folded in, and holy. so the boundary links with time and space according to its own subjectivity. (Derrida: the subject is that which is identical to itself.) links but not locks. nothing is locked, ever. the linking things which cross the distance from the boundary to time and space are jiggly, flexible, they can undergo great stress, and the boundary, and time, and space, are suspended in a gelatinicity. (Auto-spellcheck suggests gelatin city.)

die NOR FLESH ANYWHERE ENTIRE kneel windows linoleum tribunal MAKE Try the hands of Penelope, or her eyes which make the vision looming. LAND WHAT LAND again the remote is more remote now ask why again the remote is more remote make sense now ask why now never now ask why now divide now begs what would have thought which with

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which such an a or any perfect thing will who how how but what depends on right? cannot not cannot with now ask never now why II. 18 AUGUST 2011 I have heavier, darker things. I. 17 AUGUST 2011 weird opening weird hollow the hot wind DAPHNE you cannot rely on the sensual. night after night in the library

faces faces are             some whiles like charcoal                                some whiles like ash                                some whiles the linen in a white breeze their moistures wicked out by a dry sun scattered over a wan stream or hurtled scattering over a cliff faces are             taken                                or whispered                                or burnt down to coals scattered or hurtled toward the grand taken stand, escarpment. fire! and afternoons in the library while the same trees are flagging and the same causes are drawing the cypress up and out of the ground and drawing the daphne up and out of the ground and making the tree an articulate make making the tree with leaves, cells, with libido in the margins [while…, what?] oh daphne, long mornings in the library, north reference, south reference, the forced air like a song the keyboards, the doors to the bathrooms, almost the clock with its second hand, its minute hand, its hour hand it's your long intercalation

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the spiral staircase the special collections the bricks the daphne the long sighing the muscles the deeply muffled groaning daphne |dafnē| noun a small Eurasian shrub with sweet-scented flowers and, typically, evergreen leaves. • Genus Daphne, family Thymelaeaceae: several species, including mezereon and spurge laurel. ORIGIN late Middle English (denoting the laurel or bay tree): from Greek daphnē, from the name of the nymph Daphne . Daphne |dafnē| Greek Mythology a nymph who was turned into a laurel bush to save her from the amorous pursuit of Apollo. (source: “Dictionary.”) CHILD’S QUESTION what happens if you stop clinging to those questions

what happens if you just start moving? ASSIGN DEGREES OF URGENCY TO (WOUNDED OR ILL PATIENTS) 2 crime and title and titular tryst trying to pry the treacle [beast molly sentimental- ity] in triage 3 triurnal diurnal consequential olympic … kilter and colonoscopy … grandmothers wasting grandmothers away … he tied my hands around my body … the submarine. its periscope. … frightful. … _________________________ 2 the dictionary, where everything is hypertexed, what is hyper. 3 from French, from trier ‘separate out.’ The medical sense dates from the 1930s, from the military system of assessing the wounded on the battlefield. (source: “Dictionary.”)

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fruitful. … can you tell the difference, you wholly-entire ingrate ? … you. wholly. entire. ingrate. … ingrate. … crime. kerosene. colonoscopy. … telescop-eee- -eera- -sure a lake. in maine. … a tin roof. a random murder. the random murder of someone you know. someone you know. a random murder. restate thesis. help your reader. ABSTENTION the sun now atones he finds me 4       in the morning5 _________________________ 4 softly 5 waking

and lingers over me6 _________________________ 6 coquet light

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UNTITLED (FOR LIBRARY POEMS)

… listen                 at night                                to dwellers                                                                             love is                                hear                 the night open the mystic’s body …

... thunder roams                the mezzanine                               a word                                                                            pacing                               the stacks                a panther …

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Jac Nelson has been out on loan for three years and now has a degree in Classics & Religion from Reed College. Her poems appear in c_L, Homunculus, Peaches & Bats, Otoliths, and Reed College Creative Review, and have twice received honorable mention for the Mary Barnard Academy of American Poets Prize. Jac’s backyard is a parking lot in Portland, Oregon, USA.
 
 
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