from Antediluvian Sonnets
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All worked up to purchase nothingness
What you don't know but now inhabit
Detached from your name
Detail the diagram, labeling the biology
Of loss in everlasting diaristic acrobatics
Comb, pillow, dust
Read flourishing trace
The hand in your pocket
When did news become advice
Bury invitations, plant ancestral
Relics in plain blight
You don't need to tell anyone
Take the language from your body
Revelry
What you don't know but now inhabit
Detached from your name
Detail the diagram, labeling the biology
Of loss in everlasting diaristic acrobatics
Comb, pillow, dust
Read flourishing trace
The hand in your pocket
When did news become advice
Bury invitations, plant ancestral
Relics in plain blight
You don't need to tell anyone
Take the language from your body
Revelry
***
My renderings of fire felt flat trying
To compose a narrative which isn't
Dissolving like a collapsing star
Or series of reactive letters
Written in the dark to no one
You said nothing because you weren't alive
I couldn't face that we'd never meet
My need for solitude was vast
Yet my wish for nothing plagued me
I tried to want what I did not need
Sound of a voice heard by someone
Else holding a phone to their ear
Unmistakable like a shadow
Of wreckage re-emerging
To compose a narrative which isn't
Dissolving like a collapsing star
Or series of reactive letters
Written in the dark to no one
You said nothing because you weren't alive
I couldn't face that we'd never meet
My need for solitude was vast
Yet my wish for nothing plagued me
I tried to want what I did not need
Sound of a voice heard by someone
Else holding a phone to their ear
Unmistakable like a shadow
Of wreckage re-emerging
***
I call a person to
Haul things away
Such as broken
Furniture but who
Can I call about walking
Down the street in winter
When retreat is unreal
Director of rodent mitigation
Bridges, tenements, rooftops
Resonant disruption
A gold facade
Ghostly portraits of neighbors
Deep in clouds of dust—sky
Candy annotates our actions
Haul things away
Such as broken
Furniture but who
Can I call about walking
Down the street in winter
When retreat is unreal
Director of rodent mitigation
Bridges, tenements, rooftops
Resonant disruption
A gold facade
Ghostly portraits of neighbors
Deep in clouds of dust—sky
Candy annotates our actions
***
All that matters is this space of quiet
Notebook and coffee even if nothing happens
That my hands were here
New deaths up ended hide and plunging
Gates of pearl in the limbo between
Blunders and atrophy—bliss and milk
Misty opera and behind the scenes books
Think of sleep as a ride, a code, royalty-punk
Laboratories where language flees tongue
Ear and era have the same letters
I dreamed a person said, I'll have a drink because I'm hot
Standing by the highway shirtless in running shorts from the 80's
You dreamed cats bit your stomach and ripped up papers
How to settle for the present when there is only now
Notebook and coffee even if nothing happens
That my hands were here
New deaths up ended hide and plunging
Gates of pearl in the limbo between
Blunders and atrophy—bliss and milk
Misty opera and behind the scenes books
Think of sleep as a ride, a code, royalty-punk
Laboratories where language flees tongue
Ear and era have the same letters
I dreamed a person said, I'll have a drink because I'm hot
Standing by the highway shirtless in running shorts from the 80's
You dreamed cats bit your stomach and ripped up papers
How to settle for the present when there is only now
***
A friend called crying from the hospital
I said losing people I love is changing
Me in ways I don't like
The other side of this abyss
Why holidays fucking suck
Stop trying to retrieve pasts no longer exist
I didn't even like those parties but the sense
Of having a place
Staying home is brilliant
What have I spent on glorified sound
Falling away from scattered
Tarantula nebula cosmic cliffs
No need to make something of everything
These words can just rest
I said losing people I love is changing
Me in ways I don't like
The other side of this abyss
Why holidays fucking suck
Stop trying to retrieve pasts no longer exist
I didn't even like those parties but the sense
Of having a place
Staying home is brilliant
What have I spent on glorified sound
Falling away from scattered
Tarantula nebula cosmic cliffs
No need to make something of everything
These words can just rest
from Names, Before They Were Maidens |
Dressing
A moment in a car when I innocently attempted to help but had no idea how. The person I tried to help sat in the passenger seat and cried. At that moment I was completely bewildered, as if neither of us had been given scripts for a difficult scene. I knew only the motivations of my character. The other person in the scene, did they have a script? Or was it that this person had no language for what distressed them? One problem was that this was not a scene, though the person crying had been obediently performing a received version of self which no longer fit. What would fit was still unknown, unwritten and neither of us knew at that time that the tears generated were meant to encourage the redrafting of this interlude.
***
Phosphates
To love a word is nonsense—which is the only assortment of senseless accoutrements required. The phosphate of a word in various bodies.
***
Luminosity
I went to visit my father's luminosity. Every time I did this I had to remind myself that was not exactly what I was doing, even though that is the distinct impression I had. I drove a distance on highways with ever changing numbers, pulled into an industrial park and stopped beside an enormous glass edifice. There was a fountain in the front and the doors were exceedingly heavy. Then I entered an office and waited. A smiling young woman behind the counter asked if I'd like a beverage. As I waited (the wait was always brief) I'd say to myself, this isn't going to hurt at all. Eventually a man would come and greet me. Always a man, though the man was never my father. In this office women sit behind desks and men are permitted to walk. But I am a woman walking by my own volition, into an office for an in depth conversation I will mostly fail to understand. This going to visit my father's luminosity is all about building trust in concepts based on nothing. The funny thing is, these experts know nothing about my father's luminosity. Luminosity is only a word. The truth is that this particular luminosity was given to me years ago, but I still think of it as my father's luminosity. When will I start to consider it my own? When will I realize that no trained experts are necessary? To visit my own luminosity is a startling proposition, which might mean going nowhere, speaking to no one.
from A Lava Step At Any Time |
When every part of me does not want to go
What I knew I didn't
The mind's ceaseless games to avoid the actual
Counting days, reasons not to detach
Was it the day of my perpetual headache—you went
It might have been what might have been
Lists—what must be written, what must be spoken, what must be arranged
Where do these questions live?
Who was I when no one—and who am I when you depart
I cling to the book and bring with me the book of living and dying
I searched for the color of the book, saffron, before awake, without sight
Eventually the color appeared
I had recalled the spine not the cover
What is a cover?
I rise from bed and attend my lists
In the middle of acceptance, when you're still here
"I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity" ED
What I knew I didn't
The mind's ceaseless games to avoid the actual
Counting days, reasons not to detach
Was it the day of my perpetual headache—you went
It might have been what might have been
Lists—what must be written, what must be spoken, what must be arranged
Where do these questions live?
Who was I when no one—and who am I when you depart
I cling to the book and bring with me the book of living and dying
I searched for the color of the book, saffron, before awake, without sight
Eventually the color appeared
I had recalled the spine not the cover
What is a cover?
I rise from bed and attend my lists
In the middle of acceptance, when you're still here
"I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity" ED
***
The number eighteen kept appearing, the day before you left, and feathers, for several days before.
And these notes were written on the days before your passing.
I kept noticing all of the feathers, in unexpected places. I've been seeing and not knowing what to
make of as they float up and down in air, or appear at my feet. I thought about angelic visitations
but could not discern any message.
This morning pulling my towel down after the shower, when I looked at the glass, there was an
impression that looked like feathers, all over the glass. This hasn't happened before, in celestial
purple—vibrational space.
I said thank you for being with me, to all of the feathers.
And these notes were written on the days before your passing.
I kept noticing all of the feathers, in unexpected places. I've been seeing and not knowing what to
make of as they float up and down in air, or appear at my feet. I thought about angelic visitations
but could not discern any message.
This morning pulling my towel down after the shower, when I looked at the glass, there was an
impression that looked like feathers, all over the glass. This hasn't happened before, in celestial
purple—vibrational space.
I said thank you for being with me, to all of the feathers.
***
And the dialogue with you is called?
Finally you allow yourself to cry.
I've been busy.
Flying across conundrums.
You wouldn't use that word.
Managing everyone's inner disaster.
Impossible.
Like it's not my father dying.
Careful with your tenses? It won't hurt my feelings if you write that I'm dead.
Why should I?
I don't know, fluidity?
Though I'm starting to catch myself in the act.
Of?
Almost avoiding—.
By your loyalty to each and every—. Want to play ping pong?
Now?
When else? I bet I'd still beat you—dead.
I'm sure you would. I recognize that attitude and it's been so long.
You have no idea how glad I am to be out—.
Which stopped resembling you the second you stopped breathing.
I haven't looked—.
The way you wrote "honestly" just now, in my notebook, looks like your handwriting.
It is my handwriting.
And everything that seemed so urgent?
Give it to the wind.
Don't forget that hand gesture with the saying.
Like this? (flutters hand up and away).
Also, you could try saying NEXT, while snapping
And these are tactics for—?
Dismissing a reaction to something or someone that might be diminishing.
Meaning, don't—.
Exactly.
I caught myself reading your copy of an underlined dog-eared thought form, when I could not sleep.
And you told yourself not sleeping, nothing, was a problem.
Because there are no problems.
That's what the book says.
And then the power flickered out, and back, three times.
Power was restored at 1:56 AM according to an ancestral cell.
Cell or cell?
As in body or device?
There is no "OR"!
And I realized I'd been keeping myself stuck.
My death is waking you up!
I don't have time to anoint every tear.
My death is fantastic!
Too much enthusiasm! Though I do feel a little bit stranded in the material world.
Make the upgrade to 5D. Do it now and now and you'll downshift less often.
I am trying! And the world is so alluring.
Try this—give it to the wind.
Help me to stop strengthening the fiction of me.
Finally you allow yourself to cry.
I've been busy.
Flying across conundrums.
You wouldn't use that word.
Managing everyone's inner disaster.
Impossible.
Like it's not my father dying.
Careful with your tenses? It won't hurt my feelings if you write that I'm dead.
Why should I?
I don't know, fluidity?
Though I'm starting to catch myself in the act.
Of?
Almost avoiding—.
By your loyalty to each and every—. Want to play ping pong?
Now?
When else? I bet I'd still beat you—dead.
I'm sure you would. I recognize that attitude and it's been so long.
You have no idea how glad I am to be out—.
Which stopped resembling you the second you stopped breathing.
I haven't looked—.
The way you wrote "honestly" just now, in my notebook, looks like your handwriting.
It is my handwriting.
And everything that seemed so urgent?
Give it to the wind.
Don't forget that hand gesture with the saying.
Like this? (flutters hand up and away).
Also, you could try saying NEXT, while snapping
And these are tactics for—?
Dismissing a reaction to something or someone that might be diminishing.
Meaning, don't—.
Exactly.
I caught myself reading your copy of an underlined dog-eared thought form, when I could not sleep.
And you told yourself not sleeping, nothing, was a problem.
Because there are no problems.
That's what the book says.
And then the power flickered out, and back, three times.
Power was restored at 1:56 AM according to an ancestral cell.
Cell or cell?
As in body or device?
There is no "OR"!
And I realized I'd been keeping myself stuck.
My death is waking you up!
I don't have time to anoint every tear.
My death is fantastic!
Too much enthusiasm! Though I do feel a little bit stranded in the material world.
Make the upgrade to 5D. Do it now and now and you'll downshift less often.
I am trying! And the world is so alluring.
Try this—give it to the wind.
Help me to stop strengthening the fiction of me.
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Laynie Browne is the author of seventeen collections of poems, three novels, and a book of short fiction. Her recent books of poetry include: Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter, 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar, 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox, 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). Her work has appeared in journals such as Conjunctions, A Public Space, New American Writing, The Brooklyn Rail, and in anthologies including: The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press), The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, UK), and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (W.W. Norton). Her writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches Creative Writing, and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.
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