Eight Directions
I didn’t want to be myself for a while,
or by myself—being me was lonely
even when I pretended to be
someone else. To lose myself
I went for a walk through the snow.
My fear of the future followed.
Of late it felt close at hand,
ready to stalk up behind me,
so I walked backwards, saw
my footsteps stretch far away
to the doorstep of my cottage.
I imagined a writer
had taken my seat at my desk
flush to the upper window,
and was transcribing
word for word my diary
into the blank pages of another.
I stood in the snowfield and watched
a green sunset, looked back
at the writer intent at his task.
When I was gone,
absorbed back into germs
and leaf-mold of a fescennine world,
what would remain were these words,
more important than the hand
that wrote them.
The hands I could cut off and mail
to a girl who would fall in love with me.
And when she asked for more letters,
I would go to her and throw
what was left of my arms
around her. We would talk
as the snow reddened
with her disappointment,
for I had no other gift
except the one I had destroyed.
I was speechless, watching myself
at the desk lifting the words off
with a razor and setting them down
on a new page with the secret satisfaction
only the plagiarist knows.
I glared across the expanse
where I stood. I was a stranger
ashamed under a wind-shaped tree,
and knew my life,
the recrudescence of it,
was in my hands.
I kept walking. The only voice
rattling in my head was mine—
its thoughts my own,
entirely unoriginal.
I felt trapped in a loop,
as once in a crumbling Italian village
when, despite my efforts
to find the train station,
I wound up three times
on a street of prostitutes,
pooling in backlit windows,
rouged and waving butterfly fans.
I must have known I’d return
to this moment glued in my mind:
me on a divan, engaged
in an act of self-abuse
I could neither complete nor refuse.
When the memory released me,
I pointed north and followed
until the cottage dissolved
to static. The ground rose.
I was on a hill over the city
where highways the working class built
radiated from a central ring
in eight directions like a tarantula.
Some arched ten stories,
cresting over lofts and offices;
some were unfinished,
cantilevered into midair
or broken in sections.
One of those roads would lead
me to where I needed to go--
into the catacombs
of an abandoned condominium.
In my mind I was already traveling,
propelled forward on a ribbon
like a video-game character.
If I died en route,
I would restart at the beginning.
A horrifying idea—one could
learn one’s fate and succumb
to it again and again.
What if the road, a debased Romanesque,
curved floridly back upon itself
after the Projects, or ended
where new conurbation began
with fallen palm trees? I could see
fields of rusted shopping carts.
Behind one door
was a room arranged by a singular logic:
two overstuffed chairs,
a wall of old books,
lamps in stuttering fluorescence.
On a chaise longue reclined
an inanimate woman in the depths
of a dream from which
I was about to wake her.
When I knocked, the sound
came from inside my chest.
or by myself—being me was lonely
even when I pretended to be
someone else. To lose myself
I went for a walk through the snow.
My fear of the future followed.
Of late it felt close at hand,
ready to stalk up behind me,
so I walked backwards, saw
my footsteps stretch far away
to the doorstep of my cottage.
I imagined a writer
had taken my seat at my desk
flush to the upper window,
and was transcribing
word for word my diary
into the blank pages of another.
I stood in the snowfield and watched
a green sunset, looked back
at the writer intent at his task.
When I was gone,
absorbed back into germs
and leaf-mold of a fescennine world,
what would remain were these words,
more important than the hand
that wrote them.
The hands I could cut off and mail
to a girl who would fall in love with me.
And when she asked for more letters,
I would go to her and throw
what was left of my arms
around her. We would talk
as the snow reddened
with her disappointment,
for I had no other gift
except the one I had destroyed.
I was speechless, watching myself
at the desk lifting the words off
with a razor and setting them down
on a new page with the secret satisfaction
only the plagiarist knows.
I glared across the expanse
where I stood. I was a stranger
ashamed under a wind-shaped tree,
and knew my life,
the recrudescence of it,
was in my hands.
I kept walking. The only voice
rattling in my head was mine—
its thoughts my own,
entirely unoriginal.
I felt trapped in a loop,
as once in a crumbling Italian village
when, despite my efforts
to find the train station,
I wound up three times
on a street of prostitutes,
pooling in backlit windows,
rouged and waving butterfly fans.
I must have known I’d return
to this moment glued in my mind:
me on a divan, engaged
in an act of self-abuse
I could neither complete nor refuse.
When the memory released me,
I pointed north and followed
until the cottage dissolved
to static. The ground rose.
I was on a hill over the city
where highways the working class built
radiated from a central ring
in eight directions like a tarantula.
Some arched ten stories,
cresting over lofts and offices;
some were unfinished,
cantilevered into midair
or broken in sections.
One of those roads would lead
me to where I needed to go--
into the catacombs
of an abandoned condominium.
In my mind I was already traveling,
propelled forward on a ribbon
like a video-game character.
If I died en route,
I would restart at the beginning.
A horrifying idea—one could
learn one’s fate and succumb
to it again and again.
What if the road, a debased Romanesque,
curved floridly back upon itself
after the Projects, or ended
where new conurbation began
with fallen palm trees? I could see
fields of rusted shopping carts.
Behind one door
was a room arranged by a singular logic:
two overstuffed chairs,
a wall of old books,
lamps in stuttering fluorescence.
On a chaise longue reclined
an inanimate woman in the depths
of a dream from which
I was about to wake her.
When I knocked, the sound
came from inside my chest.
The Bend
I read by the fire,
and when I woke,
the fire was out.
My coat was burnt.
A coyote eating a deer
across the river looked up.
A hunter had left it
where it dropped.
I hurled a rock at the coyote,
wanting it gone. It lowered
its head and ate,
like I wasn’t there.
I splashed my face.
The morning was light without sun.
A cloud floated in the river
and a fish swam through it.
To die in a dream is to wake
or die. I’d fallen from a plane,
my face was wet with clouds.
Before I hit, a gunshot woke me.
I rubbed my eyes. The book lay unburnt.
I couldn’t see the sun
when the cloud dispersed
in the river. The coyote was gone.
I was unsure what sky
I’d fallen through.
I followed the river’s bend
back to camp, relit the fire,
and boiled eggs in river water.
The yolks were red.
Buzzards kettled in the air.
I brushed off my coat,
used it as a blanket.
I covered my face with the book,
but couldn’t sleep. Clouds
floated behind my eyes.
and when I woke,
the fire was out.
My coat was burnt.
A coyote eating a deer
across the river looked up.
A hunter had left it
where it dropped.
I hurled a rock at the coyote,
wanting it gone. It lowered
its head and ate,
like I wasn’t there.
I splashed my face.
The morning was light without sun.
A cloud floated in the river
and a fish swam through it.
To die in a dream is to wake
or die. I’d fallen from a plane,
my face was wet with clouds.
Before I hit, a gunshot woke me.
I rubbed my eyes. The book lay unburnt.
I couldn’t see the sun
when the cloud dispersed
in the river. The coyote was gone.
I was unsure what sky
I’d fallen through.
I followed the river’s bend
back to camp, relit the fire,
and boiled eggs in river water.
The yolks were red.
Buzzards kettled in the air.
I brushed off my coat,
used it as a blanket.
I covered my face with the book,
but couldn’t sleep. Clouds
floated behind my eyes.
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A former Associate Professor at McGill University, Thomas Heise is currently an Associate Professor of creative writing and American literature at Pennsylvania State University (Abington). He is the author of Moth; or how I came to be with you again (Sarabande) and Horror Vacui: Poems (Sarabande), as well as The Gentrification Plot: New York and the Postindustrial Crime Novel (Columbia) and Urban Underworlds: A Geography of Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture (Rutgers). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Bennington Review, Chicago Review, Santa Monica Review, The Missouri Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Wigleaf, and elsewhere.
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