INDEX
Writing it down I imagine her
hands not quite shaking lines
creasing her
forehead there is fire in her
words they are livid
scars they bleed
across the page she is
(she was) in pain
that much is
evident that she had been
(not-quite-weeping)
And though the words are lined
up against one
edge this doesn't
detract -- everything flush with
the left margin is how
they like it -- so
you go with that sometimes even
though it is not how life
sorts itself nothing
really lines up that way
not fire
not blood
not pain
not-quite-weeping
But it's so derivative
someone already
did that once breaking
the lines where it isn't
expected ripping words
away from the edge
Well, then I derive
And these black marks lurching
onto white stain
pulp burn back
optic nerve-endings insist on moving
away from that
side and away
from the other cannot stay still
cannot
stay
(Nevertheless it moves)
And this is all
we should not
need to say with words but insist
on saying there
is fire
in this
(fire and salt)
So that I can remember
to change fire into
words and because
there is no water and when (night)
phone rang it was the
call I expected
(unexpectedly)
the voice at the other end saying
come to the Home daddy's
gone and when I
got there keyed in access
code with all the hallways
dark at the station
they said he's
still (still) in his room the white
curtain around the bed
(sanctum sanctorum) I
could not pull it back could not go
behind it why
do I need to tell you
this (this) is not what I wanted not where I wanted to
go there was no fire and my
father did not rise up in the
green glow of the twilight lamps or burn
with his eyes a
hole in the ceiling through which
to escape chasing
the birds he loved so (or after
the only thing he
ever did love that left him
scarred scared --not quite a bird--
unable to try ever again with that same
intensity to love) and my
father's voice is the
sound of not-quite-weeping and the
hand holding this pen (these keys)
could be my father's
hand red brown from a thousand
thousand suns the same squint now
and how it got
that way or into this
poem I cannot
explain and I am tempted
to go back and break
the lines the words up in a different
way it seems all so
arbitrary
but if it is
derivative of anything
it would be my
father even so and not one single
rhyme in the thing he
would read it with
bemusement and murmur i n t e r e s t i n g
and maybe he would not
(and maybe he would)
understand a word of this but it
is and it cries
(not-quite-weeping) black marks
bleeding white red
stains flames and the heart of this
is a helix a vector
smoke salt breaking
the lines telephone rings when (she)
least expected sliding
away from one
edge into another and the night
silence she is broken by
the insistence
of a phone's black sound of not-
quite-weeping
a line of fire
drawn carefully around an empty
hospitalbed stillness
it is not (quite)
derivative
of anything but
(salt)
(fire)
the lines that crease the palms of my
(hands)
Originally published in GW Review, 2000.
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© 2010 W. Luther Jett. All rights reserved.