E l e n i S i k e l i a n o s
<< Six Poems from _Earliest Worlds_,
released this year from Coffee House Press >>
Sketch: Episode B at Gold City
As an aid
for apprehending the vanishing point:
(line drawing here of two
torsos in waves, 11' x 8')
Here is my
difficulting diffusing grace (lux
gratiae) in the mouth
of space & light
an empty open window through
which to view that which will be
painted there
in the walk from the walk
to the window, sound
flew in splinters across the square for "the
good things on earth" Lundis and luz
I was baptized in the symphony of fast, slow, fast, slow slow
My eyelids separated cities, with maps which moved
through fluids in heads, maps are displaced
street by street when I return to that place
ordinary light is replaced
glass is replaced (with magnets)
the human eye is replaced (with a fluorescent screen)
among the first things seen were
butter, transformers
among the fast things
you
My Love: Music Does
Music is a dog
that sleeps & lies & my
love lies down
with me my
true love lies
down, & he too
does possess
the capacity
for speech
& he speaks
to me he
says my true
love lies
down
with me hmm. What doesn't
my true
love like? Lilies. S/he
loves them. Now
she's lying on the table of L's, his
love looming
in available sunlight. His thinking thinks sunlight
and, why won't she
eat the bitter
dandelion green, hmm, we are building a house
on a catalpa flower.
Histories: The Great Handiwork (Water, & Soft, Delicious Air)
All of them the great mmm did
establish and so divide
mmm from me. So, too,
the earth was bounded by water, & the
boots to walk on to fit the river, the
transit of whole cities to heaven. Don't sleep at night solidly
as clearly night is possible. It is also possible
in a physical sense: earth was objective & dark,
floating on water. As with
the eclipse, so the conflict of water. Moistness of seeds,
semen, so we go
floating between vapor & liquid, solid, the highest
apple on the happy branch we wanted to reach
If of apple or
if of air, come,
take.
Histories: A Woman Was Constructed
in 20 oz. Aniquity, Certainly She Existed
It is true that [ ] discovered theclitoris in 1544, key
to heaven and
hell, viewable
to the naked eye, like
a man in the forest, or birds,
they spoke [ latin ]
"I itted it." "What
did you it?" "That," he
said, pointing. The body
is a well-oiled
machine, made
for doing things. I forgot
what I can do, she said,
talking talking She has taken the care
to change her necklace for the domination
of anyone, a female
revolutionary all jellied into action, a
living organism with sizzling
feelings. Right in the middle of something really
beautiful happening, "your frontal
lobes are scraped out with a nail file"
The beautiful thing that was
happening was happening between us; it was
the highest friable branch of the apple, like a glass
chassis in the glove of a chandelier
Histories: That Wobble of Light
I hereby cluster all day loveliness with flick
off a switch and weigh the earth, scraping
our baffled feet on sandpits of fleas
to dance. For I
said I saw a flea circus today and understood
a small planet and 20 billion frames
of families of a truth divine lording it over
the ghosts of material things which accompany human
bodies. Love walks
softly across
the surfaces, maybe of the house. The three great works of the Samians include
a 1,100-foot tunnel dug by hand under 900 rock feet. When humans finally
destroy that rock what will happen to under the after-
world's altar when presidents were pretty, porridges grand, a mole
built in the sea nearly 120 feet deep?
& in our clothes we walked on golden streets
which house and unhouse as many men & women as birds
with feathers so sharp they wound. Values?
Ecclesiastes subjects, I will shoot you
through the heart, Minneapolis, in my ideal country
if my hands are cold I do not build
a fire of your house.
Cities: The Last Lights off the West
In darkness a paperweight
on the twilight hum of
hum. A whole
paper-built world; all the little details rendered
in holepunch and pinking shears. Thus opens that setting.
(And) I laugh in the face of poprocks
& bottle rockets Nelson who got
three fingers blown off But he was just a kid Not a kid
from my American past but a kid just the same,
whole ships with
clouded leopards in the hold going down
mid-sea.
This is before farming and the rise
of great cities, the first dividends
of culture, the facts divide before
the junior-sized dehydrated
city with missing women and children. Just add water
to the bite-sized city built
upon all of its histories, trilobite
and manhole cover. Nelson
the astronomical signs in three fingers
of DNA. Gold-coated casts
of the first cut marks ever. That is how
we build and end each disturbed paper
backdrop in this city. And set it aflame. Extreme regions
of the heart shut up
within them-
selves all other countries - Where
are these? (Curtains.)
Read Jono Schneider's review of _Earliest Worlds_
Eleni Sikelianos is the author of The Book of Tendons, The Lover's Numbers, and To Speak While Dreaming. She is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, two Gertude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing, and the James D. Phelan Award for Blue Guide. Her work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including Grand Street, Sulfur, Chicago Review, and Fence. She lives in New York City.
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