INTERIOR WITH SUDDEN ... DY

BR END A SH AUG HNESSY BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY

Interior with Sudden Joy

BR END ASH AUG HNESSY was raised in California and is a graduate of Columbia University's writing program. She lives in New York City. INTERIOR

WITH SUDDEN JOY

BRENDA

SHAUGHNESSY

[ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York] Contents

I. SYNESTHESIA

StiU Life, with Gloxinia, 3

Letter to the Crevice Novice, 4

Fetish: The Historical Orphan, 6

Lure, Lapse, 8

Jouissance, 9

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Vapor through Various Satins, 11 19 Union Square We.st, Hew Yor! 10003 Afterlife, Her Empty , 13 CofrJnghl C 1999 by Brenda Shaughne.sS] AU n,/Il; rnervtd What's Uncanny, 15

Printed in the United StaltJ ofAmen"co Transpassional, 16 DtJigned by Cynthia Krupa! Fint publiJJud in 1999 by FarTar, Straus and Giroux SweU, 17

Dear GonrJya, 18 Library o/Congros Cataloging-in-Publicotion Data ShaughnmJ, Bmuta, 1970- You're Not Home, It's Probably Better, 20 Interior M:th suddtn joy / Brenda Shaughnessy. - 1st ed. p. an. Rise, 21 ISBNO-S74-52698-2 (PhI.) I. Title. Fortune, 22 PSS569.HS5J155 1999 8IJ'.54-ddl 98-50010 Glossary, 24 II. DARK CHURCH OF HANDS III. PROJECT FOR A FAINTING

Middle,29 Projectfor a Fainting, 51

Your One Good Dress, 30 Perfect Ending, 53

Your Name on It, 32 The Lamp Garden, 54

Simulacra, 33 Ten Jennies, 59

Rosarium, 34 CaUing Her Home, 60

Lacquer, 35 Musee, 62

Epithalament, 36 You Love, You Wonder, 64

Thirteenth Summer, 38 Voluptuary, 66

Starting Here and Going Back, 39 Mistress Formika, 68

Parallax, 40 Panopticon, 70

Cinema Poisoning, 42 Ever, 72

Postfeminism, 43 Sleptember, 73

Wrongbodied, 45 Illumine, 76

Arachnolescence, 46 Interior with Sudden Joy, 79 The Question and Its Mark, 48 Acknowledgments, 83 [ I]

Synesthesia Still Life, with Gloxinia

I will make something ofyou both pigment and insecticide. Something natural, even red, like serviceberries. Which a cloister ofyoung Benedictine nuns, in exile and drought, found and brilliantly crushed into a blessed moxie wine. With terrible pride, with gloxinia, the -shaped flower, served it bitter and staining in the chalice. By evening chapel, habits thrown up and still, their insides found all blue, as suspected. I am cold now and I cannot paint or move you. Letter to the Crevice Novice

I wanted nothing. I am not a stray mule than six feet is bottomfeeding. Deeper & gaudy caravan pulling a big , than that, the proxy eros is tricking us open legs, a head ofwire. good: tight No-Iove-you's in a tongue

I want singers to shear your eye from the flocking thicker than water. Bluer too. ofmy city ofsuperior grammar & wincmg. To keep you blind, my alabaster scourge.

It must be a Love, this crackpot ofheart, my sterling & cashmere & no money. You my fat bad fricassee, cough ofa candle.

Through snow, my little weather, you are gone through the cravesty turnstile to my other kind ofhomemaking.

I've always been home outside. Night likes me. Vampiring I would have killed all I loved & kept all our lives

for centuries, crypt-crock. Love was death enough. How deep is the Mariana Trench? For the crevice novice, anything more

[5 ] Fetish: The Historical Orphan

Czarina! Tell me you're not giving up the rogue May Mother Russia lie burnt inside your shepherdess red rule for a cottage edged with timothy and vague skirt. May your meager nest be filled with peahen whortleroot. Make room for me in your scullery, as good a meal as I have been for your uniformed surrogates. strange queen ofSiber with your hand stroking the back Someday may your icy love know the afRiction ofMongolia. It is too Iowa land and the dear ofthe abandoned, ofthe sexual underchild: cyclopia, intima ofyour delicate organs will brush a fusing ofthe retinas, to see yourself as I see you. desperately against your blue inner skin. I would volunteer myself, ifI weren't such a trollop on queue for the strappado. In my heart,

I'm a candidate for the spoon ofstrychnine in my tea. I would choose that, ifyour well-missed wonderland ofpunishment were here.

But it's not. You have left me to the rack, which I will accommodate. My journalbox oflove letters to you is bursting. Someday my family will slide out around these censors, scoundrels, and send my devotions, like a sea ofraving quillfish, an imbroglio ofplainstone and flogging, to you in your exile.

[6 J [7J Lure, Lapse Jouissance

There is no style in sleep, Your phantoms hang neatly from skyhooks, only the sense ofnethers startled ready to be , ready to disembody you. up from the supple interior. You have shelled yourself ofthis curved room Guarded handsomely, I am awake and the smell is ofburnt door, (for a baker ofcourse in love with a painter will mix too hard) slackbelly, hot. It is an abattoir, lacking its usual firmness. and preening in the lord-loud and ecstatic doubt purchased from all last nude cringing. Your ordinary sweet kinesis, peevish in the crumble and whetstone ofyour body. Dull bronze cowbells for hands is what I want. And so you go. Every city has a place called the Roxy. Go. To keep from the quicksand ofthis: The serious honeycomb leaking, I would streak you with yellow bruises. Unbearable curl. Tender leviathan in the last Your garland, my shaky lamb, window, crimson facing west. we are close in this How could you? You are Gundella. slow evening , You are anyone's Maria.

we are growing down, Electric to perishing, your more auxiliary lovers, our winter-slung bodies fooled like pralines or quaaludes, cannot touch you. and necklaced with furious morning.

[ 8 ] [9 ] Vapor through Various Satins

No teasing or lockjaw. Caustic. All ofyou, even shadow, I have been so dirty must be bull's-eye. Your shaggy, skeptical in each place you've looked quasar has died the way Andromeda dies: my body has absorbed so very late at night. You are disenchanted. the light, the iris stain,

You are all rain-collected, in a butterfish sac and marked me. Mud. opaque and draining. Bruise. Calendar ofsalt

The description of this you hold under and faith. I will try, like a genius in dark water. in the sun and in lesser

fire, to blot this slur, flaw discolored, with the speckled

cloth ofnear origin: our bedclothes, those trophies

fringed flat and holy. Such a ripe display. Starling,

skillbreast, swathed too clean and brief-handed,

[ 10 ] [11 ] Afterlife, Her Empty Dress

fall over yourselfleaving, I lie quiet among my possible , your hinged, your blurred feet to head, feet to head. Blue, black, white, red. silhouette etched, rising more visible, more liquid. I am grim at the waist, squandered through the legs. with a turned-in face.

Lie with a design on my back, a spade in clover. Been given a flat ofstone to line

my fortress, and a curtain ofprivacy for your old sweet water. Can you see me

on the other side ofthe jumpy garden coiled out to you? Blind as a wedding,

so white you're blue. Little fog queen, without a corpse, I take you peeled

[12] [13 ) What's Uncanny

too bright.l throw you starved ofair. is the body's wiry edge singed & dried, I kiss you still warm, touched at last by the curious colored with ash. gloves ofthe question guard. lleave you under a cloud, but I carve Too much choreography. you in night, that finer edge, the old arc ofyour hand. Hamstrings, half edible & music, stretched like catgut, the sad-animal pull.

Our knees two peculiar systems oflocking, oflooking. Too little dance.

Compulsion is always narcissism: I miss you, admit it.

I'm gifted, I give in. I give you all myoId synesthetic fire.

Loved-body smoke is terribly popular in dry neighborhoods,

and our lungs are succulents. We share this loss ofbreathing. Listen for it.

[] .5 1 Transpassional Swell

Perfection is the campsite for those who have stopped halfWay. Svelte with eventual sex, who could help I've melted my silver for you. but gorge herselfon low violet leaning everywhere?

Belonging is invisible: this can be seen at the proper distance. The shine and shifting slate ofthe sky murmurs I've burned my blue curtains its irresistible confession: I am more than blue and spent myself on an intricate openwork ofrazor wire, to cut ifyou are the violent imprint. I am swollen, vexed endlessly and only skylights for the honeybees in webs. finite against your bodies.

I'm living alone in a kind ofcube which is barely electric, the hot This slim stalk ofsilhouette slides via nimbus plate blows the tiny fuse down the eyelights without a skirmish. Glossy with sly undoing, blisterlike. but I have noodles and wine and a nice singing voice. Ifyou came back I could make you We are disheveled, though too skeptical to abandon our dimpled limbs a necklace. The small planets drop by every few months, slivered; the big ones never and never and fill the insides ofslips with mere threat and strop of thunderpeal. do I feel abandoned. Belonging is invisible: I, on the other hand, We toss freely with fever this mirror am merely shielding. desilvered. And break into rain upon finding such umber yielding offrost to febris.

This strumpet muscle under your breast describing you minutely, Volupt, volupt.

[J 6 J [17 ] Dear Gonglya,

The most inscrutable beautiful names in this world I would revise it and say that everything is only always do sound like diseases. nothing, truncated. It is because they are engorged.

G., I am a fool. Love, What we feel in the solar plexus wrecks us. Halfway squatting on a crate where feeling happened. Caresses. Your Igor

You know corporeal gifts besmirch thieves like me. But she plucks a feather and my steam escapes. We're awake each night at pennymoon and we micro and necro. I can't stop. But love and what-all: the uncomfortable position oftelling the truth, like the lotus, can't be held long. Ifshe knew would she just take alI her favors from my marmalade vessel and chuck them back into the endless reversible garment which is my life- an astonishing vanishing. G., I know this leller is like a slice ofelevator accident. As smart folk would say, "Everything is only Nothing's Truck."

[ 18 ] [ 1.9 ] You're No t Home, It's Pro bably Better Rise

1am calling to wish you well. 1 am calling because 1want to I can't believe you've come back, change something 1said. A year ago you asked me three questions. like the train I missed so badly, barely, 1 thought you were asking my birthday wishes and answered all which stopped & returned for me. It scared me, wrong. Ifyou remember (if! know you you'll pretend you don't) humming backwards along the track. 1 answered: I rise to make a supper succulent I) No.1 have always been homely. for the cut ofyour mouth, your bite ofwine 2) Yes. I believe you have always been too lovely for anyone to so sharp, you remember you were mine. bear. You may resist, you will relent. 3) Silk. It is not always expensive, and it is impossible to tear. At home in fire, desire is bread whose flour, water, salt and yeast, It's my birthday again and because I am cleverer now I can answer not yet confused, are still, at least, you with more nerve. But because 1am still me I am pitiless in the soil, the sea, the mine, the dead. enough to have your number and to call you with this excuse to let you know 1am still alive (I won't push it by telling you that I am I have all I longed for, you wonderful). in pleasure. You missed me, your body swelling. Once more, you lie with me, smelling I) Yes. Thank you. ofalmonds, as the poisoned do. 2) No. I found a most repulsive photo. 3) Same. Though 1don't think ofyou, still it's a near-perfect heat. And so dear when ruined.

[20J [21] Fortune

Luck today will be skill tomorrow. Ifonly your fear tomorrow. The expert veils around your face, scarlet held now gorgeous in its white cotton frock fabric woven by apprentices whose lingers could become small and frayed in the next millennia. are sad and large with the work ofbeginning.

Be brown and blowsy and on the ledge instead. Used and fueling, a succubus cannot ruin what she pulls on her tricky leash: dread's body, desire's body.

Ifterror bent double could thicken into a frenzy for the last flushed basket ofwindfalls that arms October, could you really wander forever in that shelter? Are wondering and losing the same? Ifyou ply me now all pure-voiced, with some sepia trinket from your big box ofducks, could I sculpt this cold knowledge into the fresh hot fruit swinging in next summer's branches, slimsy in rain, saturated in the pear-flustered color closed in your eyes? This bleary, fragile calendar: Your disbelief, your loveable haunting. How clever you are

[ 2;? ] [23) Glossary (of the body, performed ,n absentia)

Appendix A: Irregular Verb.! Dreaming: Nursing: What is made from scrap sapphire The milk won the meat found lying around one's basement? and the feet cheered. Begrudging: Writing: A counterfeit lit. To bones, fat is only fog. Forgetting: Whispering: Boil feelers till soft, scrape offscorched (see also Secreting) bits, put back in head. Speckles furious at dots, and all of them drunk in expensive boxes. Trying: I can never tell the truly gray heart, distracted as I am Nervous Throbbing: by what is red about it. The softest eggs, trembling for wax paper, but a song would do. Sexing: Narrative Inclusion. Praying: Peculiar remarks from a peripheral cousin. Writing: Thejuice knife had its art cut, and ran. Lying: (Example: I am mad at you.) (down) When doing, no matter what else, one cannot be the worst offin the world. Twisting: (esp. ankle) Having pink, secure in the honey-only club, (little, white) Pressed essence ofham and corkboard. but too dark to see by the moon so, insulted, rust.

[ 2.J 1 [25 ] [II ]

Fingering: Anns disanned and explaining themselves.

Thinking: Dark Church Such truths are only perversions of the perfected false. Plucked from the drink ofa drunk heart.

Tonguing: of Hands (see also Writing) Enormous language smears your place.

L2 (j 1 Middle

The last minutes ofyour life you spend dyeing wisteria.

A slashing in slanted alley light.

Born in the middle ofthe parting, groping in with two beautiful eyes on your arm,

the first minutes ofyour life you spend loving your feet backwards.

Broken house, summer house, the middle voice offish.

Without this voice, you will spend all winter blackening into bits.

[29 1 Your One Go od Dress

should never be light. That kind ofthing feels This black dress is your one good dress. like a hundred shiny-headed waifs backlit Bury your children in it. Visit your pokey and skeletal, approaching. Dripping and in hometown friends in it. Go missing for days. umson,. munnunng~. "111ne aTe you." Taking it off never matters. Thatjust wears you down.

No. And the red dress (think about it, redress) is all neckhole. The brown is a big wet beard with, ofcourse, a backslit. You're only as sick as your secrets.

There is an argument for the dull-chic, the dirry olive and the Cinderelly. But those who exhort it are only part ofthe conspiracy: "Shimmer, shmimmer," they'll say. "Lush, shmush."

Do not listen. It's a part of the anti-obvious movement and it's sheer matricide. Ask your mum. It would kill her ifyou were ewe gee el why. And is it a crime to wonder, am I. In the dark a dare,

Am I now. You put on your Nina, your Pinta, your Santa Marfa. Make it simple to last your whole life long. Make it black. Glassy or deep. Your body is opium and you are its only true smoker.

[3 a J [3 J 1 Your Name on It Simulacra

Let this one clear square ofthought be just Having no effect on myself, like a room you could come to in. An attic room, a mirror erases me. My Own touch after you've swiveled over to the wrecked corner ofthe champagne. After you feels like porn in a glass case in a museum still being designed. hand-rolled cigarettes and ass and sold your best midnight speech to a slickjack Eating eats me. Walking dusts me. ofclubs. For a stingy cut: a wet, bony Holding reminds me offishes and the looming kiss. You have nothing left to say

rutings I had when I caught one, and nothing to say it with. Mouths, then lost it or scaled it down to size. whole faces even, have been pilfered in prettier ways. For everyone who ever My size. Nothing became ofit, looked at you and thought that one thinks and nothing is quite its so damn easy, you don't have to look so becoming on me. I find my hide back at them. Ha! It is easy. This room flaking offon the eye chair: has no mirror, no leap-leer to strain or stylize the fuzz ofyour body through This is what I used to play myself with. This is what I used to see the feel. the razor ofyour eye. This room is dark, and high. Ifyou spit out the window you could kill a bug. There's the document. There's always the window, your signature.

[.12 J [33 1 Rosarium Lacquer

Ardent goodwife ofa bad fisherman, I am blessed with a fiery talent, given a generous I found my mother's diary, length ofsewing silk, privacy an indigo sack ofsilk and ink. I read it. The words inJapanese and a picture tinted almost obscene with bog violet, but the characters as American framed and neutered on the flustered as a girl offashionable twelve vanity table. Never enter bearing an amnesia so dense she could never drag it my chambers, the dark church ofhands. I climb out into the yard. the trellis ofmy own skeleton, alone and blooming, sexennial. I couldn't tell you what my mother's diary said. All is only my heat, my pierced and rushing Madonna That is private. ofsheepweed, my beloved secret body She would never tell me lustrous and raped in the mirror. that living always with a husband's The mirror, strong as a tapestry needle, and through language is like having this eye I fit, smaller, deeper, inside. birthmarks on the pancreas. Or that failing to persuade daughters to sing open her far invisible house was an insomniac's mudwell, an alien pox in the polished dark.

[34 ] [35 1 Epithalament

Other weddings are so shrewd on the sofa, short and couldn't be happier. Please, don't lose me and bamed, bassett-legged. All things here. I am sorry my clutch is all knuckled, I have no winter left, in my sore rememory, tendon and no discipline: the heart is a severed to melt down for drinking water. Shrunk down. kind ofmuscle and alone.

Your wedding slides the way wiry dark hairs do, down I can hear yours in your room. I hear mine a swimming pool drain. So I am drained. in another room. In another's.

Sincerely. I wish you every chapped bird on this pilgrimage to hold your hem up from the dust.

Dust is plural: infinite dust. I will sink in the sun, I will crawl towards the heavy drawing and design the curtains in the room ofnever marrying you. Because it is a sinking, because today's perfect weather is a later life's smut. This soiled future unplans love.

I keep unplanning the same Sunday. Leg and flower, breeze and terrier, I have no garden

[36 ] [37] Thirteenth Summer Starting Here and Going Back

Who is twelve? Not you, in absolute skirt, Stranded so well in easy and sweet on treasures twisted out failure. Rose hung from underneath the pokeweed and plywood. and haunted. Winner.

Someone has promised you sticky canyon jewels, Lover. Willow cello lover. and then showed you where to put your hands, Anyone is. Find me saying, It's like peeling the sky. so old in morning.

And suddenly in your nervous uncle's No wonder agony. Body fuchsia garden your life has the smell whittled infinite ofan old bone corset you've never seen. det4il. Not by hand.

In your own miniature Illinois, the nightsworth Lonely art ofcutting away ofever-early trains runs you ragged witll wool what's also right. Feral, insomnia, squandered earthquake. and all my life.

Slowly, in a tight dress, cheating at truth Quick night reverses or dare, a quick liquid has stolen its rival, nothing but slow heat, from your round body as you cross into sleep. brings light. By accident.

I j8 J [39 ] Parallax

II

Excluding genitalia, Kitten, six-pack, magnolia, What is a man? a goose behind a desk. Please let us A little boy all grown. A reverse neverland. find ourselves a suckhole forever.

What is a woman? I could never stop. I would never start again. Easier. She's a cipher, she hasn't been Bacon, bucket, queerbaby, decided yet. Also she's a queen. I am so big I will not smell you.

If you're not here, you're not necessarily We all know Gaea and Apollo there. Not yet. never made it with each other. Territorial. Brown dwarfs are those sad bodies too bright Brushfire. I have already expelled you, to be planets but too cool and now have the luxury ofknowing you to be stars. They lean into stars, nestled differently: perversely leonine and wary. To burn or to crust, both crisp with a hex on your light-haired belly, choices, but for this dead androgyne, and swinging, there's only Pandora's squeezebox, locked. first dangerous, then fragile, then repulsive, Come closer, toward the light. then repulsed.

[ .J 0 J [41 J Cinema Poisoning Postfeminism

I will be your first, your thirst, your third. There are two kinds ofpeople, soldiers and women, I'll cramp up boxy, I will starlet out as Virginia Woolfsaid. Both for decoration only. in roads oflight, or crimes, or words. My second coming would not be allowed Now that is too kind. It's technical: virgins and wolves. unless your masokismetlifts her . We have choices now. Two little girls walk into a bar, So I will hold you /lush against the glass. Your voice & eye are muscle & they hurt one orders a shirley temple. Shirley Temple's pimp like prodigy too soft or quick in class. comes over and says you won't be sorry. She's a fine

My double agent, you would never ask piece ofwork but she don't come cheap. Myself, I'm my miracles ofsass & light to train in less fear ofpredators than ofwalking around the athletes ofseduction in the crass voluptuary sciences like rain. in my mother's body. That's sneaky, that's more than naked. Let's even it up: you go on fuming in your The sex & chess & cello fever's gone from your myopic trust, my Avalon. gray room. I am voracious alone. Blank and loose, metallic . And rare black-tipped cigarettes

in a handmade basket case. Which ofus weaves the world together with a quicker blur ofarmed

seduction: your war-on-thugs, my body . Ascetic or carnivore. Men will crack your glaze

r42] [4.n Wrongbodied

even ifyou leave them before morning. Pigs Like this baby boy standing there on the comer, ride the sirens in packs. Ah, flesh, technoflesh, hand in jean pocket, lolly too like a cigarette; even small is too big for him. And winter there are two kinds ofpeople. Hot with mixed too small for the smallest snow, so there is none. light, drunk with insult. You and me. None is too many for me. If! had any, I'd leave them all. A baby so cynical in his wrongbody is not loveable, but past love. I am. God, ifit were you I'd change you, as ifyou'd need changing and you do. God, ifit were you I'd say, "Pick me, God." Next corner, God, me.

I ·14 ] [ 45 1 Arachnolescence

I see I have so quickly endeared you to my dazzled fray I will kill you with the blistering foods ofa Crimean war, ofbedpan. With a stealth hand on my breastbone, sluiced with a dura mater's soldier-ration oftiny I've pilfered the last gangrene remedy, honey-wax fiber, moistures, in this temple ofmy tryst with the daughter from my neighbor all century and I've bullied you ofthe red god's red dog. I will solder you to the Krsna into a few cramps yourself. Give me drug ofironworks and most bellicose dementia. Give me liberty ofterrifying strength or I will become it. or give me everything you've ever loved.

Love me in my strict empire ofphantom pain, Stop me, my ancient history, as you always have, in my wiliest contempt for all that is mere fever before I poison my own sleep with the wanderlust and sweat, strain and maculate, florid and maternal, of this my stardom in the galaxy ofworms and toxic ability. decent and plain. I want theater, the domain ofintoxicated grief. And spiffiicated louts are we, absolute gourmands of the ugliest meal.

I have a radium ofthe soul, a petulant amputation, eight! A poultice for you, my arachno-demigod, wacky and skeptical. A promise ofloot and skulduggery for all your children.

I've won the tourniquet, I've devastated toddlers in the height oftheir podlike , in their pink-naped heaven ofErasmus and his near-wife, Chlamydia. Give me five years, lovers, I will give you the ancient torture device constructed ofkisses, in the glum transfusion ofcrisp, lichen climate with rectangular erotics.

146 J (47] The Question and Its Mark

[II I]

May I cast a spell on the many swans ofLeda, making at last one spastic blizzard in spring with only enough divine mania to take one blinding day from her? Project for

The godbirds and their scopophilia keep her open for view and review, with ever new speculum and never the elegantjewelry a Fainting ofstigmata or a heart ofquartz.

May I give her only one death? Can we live ifshe lies closed in a single final pose, no syphilitic autopsy or cygnet interrogation? May I mark her prophecy, her presence in the very air, with a single gargoyle on the streetside wall on a place ofworship, finally allowed inside ifonly by disappearing into the stones?

Leda possessed a pair ofknees that also bent in prayer. I ask ofyou only what she asked for there. Project for a Fainting

Oh, yes, the rain is sorry. Unfemale, ofcourse, the rain is with her painted face still plain and with such pixel you'd never see it in the pure freckling, the lacquer ofher. The world is lighter with her recklessness, a handkerchiefso wet it is clear.

To you. My withered place, this frumpy home (nearer to the body than to evening) miserable beloved. I lie tender and devout with insomnia, perfect on the center pillow past midnight, sick with the thought ofanother year ofwaking, solved and happy, it has never been this way! Believe strangers who say the end is close for what could be closer?

You are my stranger and see how we have closed. On both ends. Night wets me all night, blind, carried.

And watermarks. The plough ofthe rough on the slick, love, a tendency toward fever. To break. To soil.

Would I dance with you? Both forever and rather die. It would be like dying, yes. Yes I would.

[ 5 1 ] Perfect Ending

I have loved the slaking ofyour forgetters, your indifferent Be anti-grandmother in your little black box. hands on my loosening. Through a thousand panes ofglass The hinges must be real gold, and wing-shaped. not all transparent, and the temperature. Increase your interest in Chronos, your chromosomes I felt that. What you say is not less than that. like heirloom silver in their silky drawers.

Return all your gifts and melt alone, naked in a new polytropic isle.

In other words, trade your ugly juvenilia

for sweet Saturnalia, infinitely.

Supply the weapons for Ulysses and Odysseus, fighting for the use of their name.

Convince everyone you are qualified,

a fine fattened pig

with your degree in Endstopography, your success in plant school.

Shut up, in everyear, in the negative mirror, in the absolute no light.

[5 ~ 1 [ 531 The Lamp Garden

Neither electric nor flame, unimaginable sunlight or plagiarist moon. soothing, encouraging, like steam on the bathroom mirror that Small bulbs ofdesire, like uprooted tulips pulled open on a whim wishes you to by a tongue. draw your face on it. You can tell, when a sentence is hard to With colored or clear shades to temper the glee. The spring glee write, whether it oflamps. is because there's a knot in your throat or in the tree before it was your tablet. Where you can sit or even lie reading newly soft and gentle pages that flirt The lamp garden is outside, surrounded by city blasts and honks rather than glare. Play chess and be undisturbed by your partner's and sirens, too-bold walls and guffaws, rumbles and shuffles. You don't hear it, because queen. Play free ofthe strange cast ofeye that makes such a game the right too eerie to light cancels the wrong sound. It's synesthesia in our favor. play in usual environments. The naked strategy. Unlike other places, it doesn't have an exact address or cross­ You can balance your checkbook in such a way that ifyou peer street, but like closely at the other places, ifyou need to get there, you will find it. I work at the tiny pages, you can see the imprinted numbers you made weeks lamp ago even with garden. I receive no salary, only gratuity. the hastiest ofpens. You remember what shape the headache was that made I have read the same book, at work, over and over again, because you forget to record your little life. each time it is so vastly different. On the green plaid couch or on the six-foot As you start to write a page it doesn't appear appallingly blank, black wood something is executioner's chair, on the tin can bed.

[51 ] f .5.5 ] The story is never old, like a day at home with an unpredictable keep rain from your eyes, even in dry seasons, but only in certain lover. It starts directions. where Sarah wonders iftime begins when she wakes up or when everybody else does. Her question leaves as she faces a grumpy breakfast Where tatami mats blithely ignore your slippery body and appear with me. unburdened when another slides beside it. Her bare feet became strangers, deja Because the cream is spotty in the coffee, the sleepy fury that is vu beings adorable. that ring a bell on somebody else's cow. Beings you end up sitting Because my angel is irritable with loveable hairs stuck to her on In your cheeks from a own ignorant love ofthe body. sideways night ofunconscious travel. The hairs are like tickets.

Her feet were so sensitive, this is what happened as 1touched The middle, where Sarah runs through rainy streets with only them. Each little galoshes and a toe as 1 caressed it was, believe me it's true, a child in a large farm plastic slicker on (I imagine it is clear), finds me swampy and family, kissed over, unscathed by too many buildings but heavily touched by wind. running to where the me in her has gone to, a perfect kind of alone.

The oldest daughter with the big face, the much smaller boy with At this point in the book it helps me to move to a discreet section pitchfork. ofthe lamp And as 1 approached each one, 1was the beloved town-folk visitor garden, where rice·paper screens filter the light the way eyebrows coming to kindly bestow my special gift on each milky young thing.

[56 ] [57 'j Ten Jennies

Each delicately wrapped and gratefully received gift, in a sober My house is just big enough to fit most country ofthe TenJennies. At parties they share mouse/city mouse ceremony, was a handling involving more than chairs with the one Lola, Furtina and me. chapped SomeJennies are performers and exclude fingers and the relief ofa rag doll or a bottle oflilac water, a OtherJennies in their work but several slingshot or a Jennies are absorbers and soak themselves paddle-game. Exchanging fevers ofdisproportionate loss. back in. I love to cut the hair ofeach one, But I skipped a child. Ignored him and went on to the baby who lucky sharp points where each ofthem ends curled in in a hundred thousand foxy ways-ending delight. I saw the small towheaded boy, head bowed politely. I oneselfisn't dying it's cutting, it's washing. look up at my I wash ten cups wet from the lips ofthe Ten love, I have somehow missed her fourth toe, her curvy one. I went Jennies, and two for Furlina and me (Lola back and showered the little one, keeper ofbalance, edge ofher being, with gets no cup she's a plant, a kind ofspy). gifts. A dozen hail-breaded oysters, warm liquor. Delineating. We cut the stems ofourJennies, Where the light pierces through your world, it lives underneath. We swirled their liquid and watched their faces. In the god- And then a subtle morning comes and floury given vertigo, it wrestles you down. In the lamp garden, I will light slims us around our sleep. We pressed forever keep reading this book. It keeps my place, like love or a father, it gives ourselves to the high outer rim ofsummer me away. and now never any Jennies.

[58 ] [59 ] Calling Her Home

She died before I was born but that didn't stop us. The first finishing touch smiling into a paper She'd come wearing a certain , to blot her lips. Ofthese papers she'd say my name with such salt' she made me a dress I wore

She called me Mary. Or Anna, or sometimes Bijou on the inside. The red marks smeared. To make when I was very hungry. is to mark: When I saw She believed me to be many, you, Mary, I chose my body.

and I became whichever, and came whenever I told you she died before I was born, did she tell you she called. My rooms were small, that lie, too? Her living, looking- you see, I was ashamed, glass body is here, heard,

and lined the walls with mirror. She was urgent as mine is. We never sleep, not soundly, for we can't for lightness, the blue height breathe a hair ofthis. ofmoonbaths on the roof, We live with slivered faces.

heels slung up off the ground, weightless The tiniest room is ours and has no door. You see her hat at the hem. Do not think fiying off, her mouth opening offlying above, think in surprise to find herself here. ofcities suspentkd. Oh, now I am embellishing. Making her up, deepening, shading, brushing down.

[ 6 () 1 [61 ] Mush

I've been so lovingly breathed into it appears I can't move. elsewhere, pure vessel, empty ofbody water but spilling I've been stuck on. proud kinesis unmoored.

A remission ofstopping, honey-frozen, gecko mid-pushup. When you look at me again I can't think. I've gone Astronomy's attractions run on light and eye. spread to the surface.

IfI smiled, I'd crack. Fake heartbreak. Zero depth ofthroat It's like a privacy. When you think oflobsters you see shell and pussy no intricacy, and you understand only eat. how could it? Fever 103, my nothing! Imagine being real When you see a bust ofancient, broken personage, someone only because only one without a name is running faster. lonely one thought you so. You make it so. Like acting but no voice only lines.

Thick makeup as thick as I am. I leave and become a kind ofnefertiti when you look down at your knees. While you think are my knees as oily I have been her, bodiless and as such, truly naked. When I am only all thoughts I can move

[ 62 ] [ 63 ] You Love, You Wonder

You love a woman and you wonder where she goes all night in But you really love this woman, how come no one can see this? some tricked- Everyone must outlaxicab, with her high heels and her corset and her big, fat become suddenly very clumsy at recognizing beauty ifyou are to mouth. keep her.

You love how she only wears her with you, how thick You don't want to lose anything, at all, ever. You want her sex and cow-eyed she swears it's only ever you she wants to see. depilated, you want everyone else not blind, but perhaps paralyzed, from the eyes You love her, you want her very ugly. Ifshe is lovely big, you down. want her scrawny. Ifshe is perfect lithe, you want her ballooned, a You wonder where she goes all night. Ifshe leaves you, you will cosmonaut. know everything about love. Ifshe's leaving you now, you already know How not to love her, her bouillabaisse, her orangina. When you it. took her to the doctor the doctor said, "Wow, look at that!" and you were proud, you asshole, you love and that's how you are in love. Any expert, observing human bodies, can see how she's exceptional, how she ruins us all.

( (j 4 J [65 ] Voluptuary

Nonnal love begs for kink. Loving wrong Where is the mark, the dark, the brain? is twisted and hair, the hair ofblood-timed I want terror ortly listening for the shallows mammals and damsels in paintings curls in the shame. Like dancers, elasticize time subversively without effort. for the sake of the body. And what body?

And espionage offlesh roots in the dirt Blister, wizen. It's worth it and it's night. ofthe heart. Vinegar love floods the tongue Who wants pretty, when pretty is plain with a uriny fire and who argues? Sour aunts. and the heart is gnarled and the fullsacked In lovers' mouths, only saccharine is unholy. forest ofbeing lost is home?

And ifmy sister married now then I will Forest where we love the beast surprising. wed wonder, I will seek blunder, Anticipated fetish like missing toes. Or a thick, and wifely be naked for a throttled, dark, hairy heart, full to pluck or comb. verging slumber slit with: love is losing. Or old. Where is the old, old lover;

Ifyou haven't known the true faulty finally ripe enough to fall without falling? pleasure ofhalf·beauty, the sublime uncomely, What is blossoming dreamt without vision two hot marble arches when the darker sun inside feeds round your vague orca trumpet ofa thigh, the silence ofstarker stars? then why would you love me? And how does fever break without liquid, without spilling? What woman cannot speak ofstrumpets? Who has struck the head oflust without a strain?

[66 ] [67] Mistress Formika

In temple city, in this tight lighthouse ofrare women, it clean. You, both gate and barrier to the hearth and breast my falling goggles stinging in the lemon juice ofEve and Adam's apple orchard. And I stumble over ofall my watching, where even your synthetic strange broken pieces strewn everywhere, what's the damage? hairs are generous, yielding to a stiff ritual, perfect with your Is it you sleeping in the grass, dear with a cheeky bliss, gynecoid East Village supersmirk. That smarts! pale and mournful? The delicious no-secret plain and defused, This performance ofthighs blessed with an excruciating genitalia quiet and ripe, the gorgon ofyour hair loved off unnatural talent for the part. For the parting. and lying guilty where you tossed it, And the pupils, we, and the lashes, all yours, observe by the broken fence, firewood for a home too well built the rules oftragedy-in-sumptuous-fabrics, loving but strict, for such arsonists ofthe flesh to resist. in fact bullying, my god the backwatching and the switchblade! And all imaginary: the spell a queen casts on her bee, a lover will let herselfbe made up in orange for the beloved, but yours is a sweeter exercise, twistier. Thank you, for shaking, for who hasn't forgotten how to use her diva-noodle? Can this be too much pleasure in one so smart, debauched and thin? So far beyond wondering we have fallen into quarreling, braided evening feelers in hand, with this dark stallion blindness, too close to the fence to jump

[ 68 ] [ 69 1 Panopticon

My bedroom window can be seen from the viewing deck To feed the telescope with quarter ofthe World Trade Center. I've seen it. after quarter, and read a book while the time ticks. What I saw? I have been blessed with seeing, as with a third eye, without the compulsive mimesis ofappearing. The luxury My roommate experimenting with my vibrator. ofan octopus is never using any legs for walking. She looked lovely through sheer curtains on my creamy bed. Is she thinking ofme? Or, to stay home with my own pair ofbinoculars, in the dark, watching whoever is I am thinking ofher and I left bread crumbs on the telepath. watching me, watch me. She can feel it, my seeing, even through a trance offog. I've lit her with it.

It is her blindfold, her sweet curse, her ration ofprivacy spilled like flour as she imagines the miraculous bread is rising.

I decided on three possible reactions:

To keep watching her and, when I go home, to mention the strange vision Jhad, describing what I saw in detail.

[7(J J [ 71 ] Ever Sleptember

Where, swift and wool in going? I love the quiet but I carve out its motives, Fell always wishing like this. one by one always more. You have in a photo

Tomorrow, want less and hunger bigger. off1owerheads, a squabbly roaring. In a gaze, Fewer terror but stronger, staggered. many bibles semifluid in endless revision.

Taken heart outside to dry. The sweat ofleisure sounds like an argument, Rain surprise and ruined. but glad. Can you help me pack my whole

Silver cold and stops the swelling. prairie in a handbox? There's a tiny sumo Why hurts from other body? wrestling in New England and in its veinstains,

Why photo soothes with flat? the wily silence ofa croning: at fifty, Salt soaks blood tender. each woman secretly pleased. Brighten flesh in slap. Why is the width between ovaries a hand? With word, not flood silent. Will you point everything you have Not leave and take me that smacks ofblue towards the soil nowhere, swift and wool in going. and reflect it upwards? Is that how we have

such a sky so supercilious with its kindling

and spin? I swam a terrible night swim

[72 J [ 73 ] through pillars ofgel, each thick translucence to help us get naked in the brain. To help us step like a leg heavy with sequatic shadows, and once up to the realm ofthe new uninvisible. everything is submerged in water nothing is wet. These cakey spectacles are such a throwgloom,

Sound is a melon bowled under you. aren't they? Why only one mind so as to

Why sing when before you weren't singing? have to change it often? And often with a holstered

All your years ofdeep, hot thinking shrink silencer on the future perfect literature smuggled to one tiny Wildean gnomy quipster, forever out ofyour implicit country.

"Vladimir is glad I'm here" and whatnot.

Why an excess ofhands to hold open and prove empty in perfect bowl form? In my most rare ofdances, what I call "The Cuisinart,"

I display this tender power. Used up

OUf uselessness, haven't we? But sometimes a can opener weasels its way cutely into your house ofvague peppermint uglies. It's some perverse test ofdepth for us flatheads-it's a share-tactic-

[ 74 ] [ 75] Illumine

I open her dark diary, It's a small place. lotus and teasing where I am less than one. we're bound together. Witch's More than two. I laugh book ofvim and bliss. at the ways to count a person. The spell-cracked spine. All mine. I'm a sliver till she looks through. A good book Her hands have the acidity gives you secrets but keeps ofa whisper, carving one. The mirror knows like stone on softer stone. how edgy its own silhouette is. The sound is sweet This book keeps me. with Sisyphus. Oh, my scavenger's daughter. Now, sable or silver aubade silent at last. The story I know the orifice, locked in the rubbing the edges ofthe absence, ofhands through stone cell by the tracing ofher very walls to wellwater. tips, her erasing. Straining This nulla swells me pure through the lakeshadow ofher. the netherworlds. Bring me closer and teach me Replacing fog with light closing. Teach me losing. shelter, the morning throat. Each morning, at leaving,

[76 J [77 ] Interior with Sudden Joy

[after a painting by DOTolMa Tanning1

something must be torn. To come into my room is to strike strange. I must rise to open the blinds. My plum velvet pillow Be my hussy spot the only furniture. How light tears, sears, the body. And seals Red stripes around my ankles, tight in its impossible script. as sisters. We are maybe fourteen, priceless with gooseflesh.

Our melon bellies, our mouths of tar. Us four: my mud legged sister, my bunched-up self, the dog Be the whirligigjust a prick on the eye.

We are all sewn in together, but the door is open. The book is open too. You must write in red like Jesus and his friends.

Be my other sister, we'll share a mouth. We'll split the dress down the middle, our home, our Caesarian.

When the Bishop comes he comes diagonal, from the outside, Be is a lie. He comes to bless us all with cramps,

[78 ] [ 79 ] mole on the chin that he is, & hot with home. Breathless with to bring us the red something, mercury, columbine. Come, let us miss a glow, a pumping. another wintertime.

Not softly a rub with loincloth & linseed. More ofa beating, with heart up the sleeve.

He says, The air in here is tight & sore but punctured, sudden, by a string quartet. We are! In these light-years we've wrung a star.

I am small for my age. Child ofvixenwood, lover ofthe color olive and its stain.

I live to leave, but I never either. One leg is so long we can all walk it. Outside is a thousand billen skins and civilization its own murder ofcrows. I am ever stunned, seduced whistle-thin

[80 ] [8 I ] Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors of the foUowingjoumals in which some ofthese poems have appeared, or are forthcoming.

Inttn'or with. Sllddnt JOJ, Parallax, and Afterlife, Her Empty Dress appea~d in Paris Review.

Jouissanu, Fetish: 71te Historical Orphan, and Vapor through Van'ow Satins ap­ peared in Western Humanitw Review.

utter to the Crevice Novice, Perfed Ending, &san'um, Middle, YOUT Name on It, Postfeminism. The Question and Its Mar!, and Thirteenth Summer appeared in Chelsea.

Still Lift, with Gloxinia and rour One Good Drtss appeared in The Yak Review.

Fortune, Project for a Fainting, Mistress FOT1n1'ka, and What's Uncanny appeared in Boston Review.

Thank you to Mit5uko Shaughnessy, Bob Shaughnessy, the Shaughnessy family, the Higa family, and the Daman! for all the love near and far. To my sister, Lisa, and Steve. To the incomparable Dorothea Tanning, for her friendship and wisdom and for her work which has changed and infonned mine immeasurably. To Bill Wadswonh and Jonathan Galassi, for their shocking beliefin me. To the Academy of

[83 ] American Poets. To Richard Howard, for honoring me with his auention, inteUi­ gence, and heart. To Lucie Brock-Broido, who with brilliant leaching helped shape

this book mysteriously. Billy CoUins, Mark Doty, Alfredo DiPalchi,J. D. McClatchy,

Sophie Cabot Black, Richard Foerster, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Helene Moglen, and Carla Frecceroj also for their true believing. Timothy Donnelly, Lynn Melnick, Mark Wunderlich, Merrill Feitell, Jamie Mirabella, Mike Albo, Monica De

La Torre, Jeni Saunders, Michelle EIligo[l, Liz Spencer, Cynthia Yahia, Sayeeda

Clarke, Ronan Culhane, Louise Dunne, Carrie Barnes, Scott Zieher, Ravi Rajaku­

mar, Laura White, Trista Sordillo, Saije Bashaw and Lucia Matioli, AI and Joan Gau­

thier: each for their crucial friendships, encouragement, and sense offamily. To Cris Beam and Robin Goldman, for their constant and unexplainable love. And to my dear

Tina.

I also wish to thank Dorothea Tanning for allowing me to use the titles of two ofher paintings, Intm'oT with Sudtkn JO) and Project JOT a Fainting; the MacDowell Colony, New York University's International Center for Advanced Studies, and the

Oscar M. Ruebhausen Commission of the Greenwall Foundation for their generous support.