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Published by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781885635167 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University Press of Colorado |
| Publication date: | 08/27/2010 |
| Series: | Colorado Prize for Poetry |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 74 |
| File size: | 136 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Annulments
By Zach Savich
Colorado State University
Copyright © 2010 Zach SavichAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-885635-15-0
CHAPTER 1
Poem After Last Night (1)
for David Bartone
A ladder built into the exterior of a truck,
all anything does is confide, every morning
beginning now, decency its own kind
of constitution, each step onto a balcony or
from a café with little outdoor seating,
not counting the city. "What year
is that from," the mother says. "First century
AD," says her son. "But that's a hundred
years."
Poem After Last Night (2)
for Jeff Downey
We proceed by pattern and anomaly, had
no money but lived above a bakery
and a florist, just-aged flowers free
in a trough. I liked how you called the street
I always take "the secret way," two fingers
held to a passing dog.
Poem After Last Night (3)
for Hilary Plum
We go to the cinema merely
for the light, view of alleys
from a balcony, to be in
the world and it is mythic:
zinnia market in the churchyard,
onions in mesh, daylit moon
a watermark on foreign currency.
The Mountains Overhead
1.
I sang: Tell me of the heart which exists
in which to continue is not
to confine
2.
Then dreamed I sang so loudly, I woke
myself singing
The cygnets' feet were lost in snow
The cygnets were lovely because footless
3.
Our augurs read their veils
What's sensible isn't seizeable, you said, waking
4.
Size-up-able
So I received lovingly all four-in-the-morning birdsong I was
a cutting-board for
Be how you were, be how you were
5.
You may only sing to dedicate a song
6.
You may hang your dresses on the back
yard's line and you may rest here
You may work in a mine where you see yourself in
the rock and every day remove a piece
as large as your body
7.
I could never hide the mountain
Our talk over music
over wind
8.
To bring you to this:
We row out now over the lake where stars are
these muscles sobbing makes
Slashed across nightsky like bones
in owl droppings
9.
Star exhaust
Have fun, we said for goodbye
10.
These seconds whole months
were once
11.
Literally: to found meaning
to founder
Every pause, a cause
Every bow, a vow
At each footfall, landfall
12.
So I pressed my fists against my eyes then drew
hot air balloons to the cabin walls
You sang: We touched in each other countries
we will separate to
I sang: As with water moving below
I was building a house on your frozen
13.
Then dreamed land had a finger in
one ear, the wind
14.
I actually mailed rose petals once
Added extra stamps, as if it mattered
Sent them the quickest route, as if
15.
Aren't you wondering what my thigh feels like?
16.
I sang: You would love it here, because I'm here
You sang: My cheek is softer where it touched your neck
I sang: I will hold you like it is enough
for a singer to hold a single word
You sang: Don't you always hold the door an extra second,
hoping?
17.
Found holding anyone is actually not like holding a strip of moonlight
Found the hair on my tongue was actually my tongue
18.
I walked home — you can see it in my eyes
19.
When you pass
When you passed your hand over the rose,
I turned
Imagining one of those cameras that extends
a whole leaf if shown a torn half
Never mind if half has grown since its tearing or
if everywhere you look, tears
20.
Are you looking?
Look, we used to say
We only say: used to say
21.
Look, the bridge runs directly along and over
the river, never touching banks
22.
And if you shake your head in line
with windmills or any seasonally closing gate,
wouldn't it be like two trains leaving beside themselves, appearing
still?
No no
23.
When the lake froze, I crossed it
To a shore closest in the coldest
24.
Can't say to land: think of me
Or: you held me in place, in places
25.
Sang: I needed you because how many times did
I watch you dress?
26.
Whole months we kneaded as much
flour as the dough would hold into the dough, thinking
when it stops holding you
may punch it down, or the snow
may also stop
27.
My tattoo, a human coverall
28.
Ground rules:
That which can't be found being standard
What we really wanted was the best
Our needs precede us
The edge of doom is doom
29.
And so in the sixth month of winter twenty-two
years old I flew west
Artichoke of dawn
Hanging-grey apron dawn
Housewife dawn
Newsprint dawn hitting a stoop
Always behind me as I went
30.
Singing: And here you are coming toward me
Everything nearing, blooms
Water cold enough to cut
I could go on
31.
As though the end of harvest were not
farthest from harvest
As though reunion were not so close to ruin
32.
Singing: This loss holds every loss
Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho!
33.
Even the bottom of the sea is made of land,
thus cruel
Dante: Here the earth produces of itself
34.
Once, you said we built the rides because
we were already screaming
Built the mines because we were
already digging
35.
As every time speaking of dawn, I mean, meant
the fires which process the coal, fired
by coal
36.
Dawn in the clouds like gold in a tooth
37.
And you said, waking: If this is a desert, I
will wipe sand from your skin
38.
I'd often wake to you pacing a cramp from your foot
On the rug like the song in a shell
39.
While across the river, a student
asked the man with his telescope what's
so special about the moon tonight
Palatable moon
40.
Then a man we saw at the dance club dressed all
in white and carrying an orange
41.
As light is the light around a light
42.
I could see by your look
43.
I wanted a gentle way of waking you, so I let
So I let a tissue
sift to your face
Features rose like roots under a road
As crows fall from wires so the wires won't fall
As swallows lift on behalf of the porchwall
The crows: hearing our voices through wires
44.
We measured heights against the kitchen jamb, as though
the floor wasn't shifting
45.
Dawn stripping you like a cat
clawing a band of wallpaper
46.
Be how you were, be how you were
I mean more
47.
I sang: Afraid I might say your name when asked
my own
And: I have waited a long time to say please
48.
Whatever it means when berries outlast leaves
Or the fact of each match being lit from the last
49.
Each match as its own
first fuel
50.
Or needing to break one's mast on the bridge or
go back to the burning dock
The mast changed to a gnarled desert tree
Sail lifted to a gull
51.
The horses hold themselves like torches so they
won't burn like themselves
52.
So I wrapped myself in you as into a movie screen
Sang: I will be happy again, but not as happy
53.
Afternoons, we watched the benign gags
of silent films
Though not as films
If you ordered a rose, you'd get
a thousand on your porch
I wanted to draw you like the lungs or a lightning rod
or a bath
54.
I drew your picture by holding
my brush over a shaking tray
55.
The blind man in the market grabbed you, sang:
Tell me with your hand how the earthquake felt
In the public library,
you washed your hand
56.
He said he could still see red
So at dusk one day of invasion parachutists appeared
to divide and bloom against
a rusting sky
As though any shadow might divide and bloom
He watched the girls on the shore gather
red berries in the parachutes
of their skirts
Seeing only the fruit
57.
Remember where you were when?
Where you are?
Or one who had been hiking or asleep and so hadn't
yet heard?
58.
If the road is shaped like an S,
you know there were mountains
59.
My road-worn spine
There's a reason they keep repeating the chorus
And only sing the names of songs
60.
I have stayed two months on my way to you
At night we wash our hands with
our hands
We call it praying
61.
And there is a tribe that carries water for months
in their cheeks, their cheeks
hanging to their bellies and they never swallow
62.
Birds migrating in circle formation, turning like
a wheel,
they each have only a wing
Flying like bottles cast from an island, love
63.
Recall: I bent my brow
to the back's small
64.
I, candle sun melts
I, your second spine
65.
Is there any pilot light that's large enough?
Yuccas grow on the excess, the only hills: of slag
Piñon pine, thistle, oaten grove
I sang a private song
66.
I slip out now across this braided
loaf of land, a pretty stretch
Sun a dial tone
67.
Wanting to be continuous yet distinguished
Never building, but sprouting
This full-body callus
I bathe in a river
The light doesn't wash here, it lathes
A Young Man's Song
68.
For a beard I wear a smear
of oil I found in a ditch
Without the man, the beard is only odor
I sang: We have only ever sat trying not to touch
69.
Walking, so aware we were touching
Thistle
Granite scape
To leave being to meet
70.
Does dawn as of purple glass of very early
thickening look darker because we're awake in it?
I don't stop to wait for you, I hurry after
71.
The creek bed frosted like it isn't dry
The pump in the lawn, a lean dancer
Glove in the road,
sunning lizard
Day diving at me like the winking of a smoke detector's light
Once a minute
I remember love
72.
So many things are there until I look
73.
Inoperable only means unsuitable for opera
74.
Now a brood follows, so alone, dilating me, exfoliating dawn
As sulfur out a smokestack so tall we don't
believe
75.
Sang: Tell me a secret I don't know I have
76.
So I spend a week here, have been carrying
a Thing so precious any touch dissolves it, but to prove
its worth, meaning, destroy it, now, I need
to go on, so I
hold it against you
77.
Observed rightly after: two waxwings in chase lifted
seed from a grain cache, dropped it as
they lifted onto
a field as though in a shadow or map of
their chase, imagine it growing, lying in it, brushing
your hand over the grass and
the seed springs ...
78.
We may rest here
79.
What I want is still harder
A possible letter at a slant in the box
80.
The wind appears to re-leave
the stripped limbs
by moving them
81.
Definitive, to keel: to stir the boiling
so it doesn't boil
Solution: We need to keep stirring faster
Be how you were, be how you were
82.
Then cut me so I unfold like the sky between
leaves into a string of paper dolls either
holding hands
83.
I brace still at traces: confetti, floss
These thoughts you put in me
I want you more than things better
84.
Singing: We can no more
than can no more
than can no more ...
85.
In the photograph, you couldn't tell
if the robin was adding a ribbon to its nest or pulling
one from it
86.
Holding out for versus reaching out for
Holding back from versus reaching back from
Holding onto versus reaching onto
87.
I sang: I held your breasts
like a single breast
My cheek is softer where it touched
your neck
88.
The dog has worn a circle around its post bare, chain
a clock hand
It is not our dog, we release it
89.
So you asked why one side of the geese
V is longer
Of the geese V we saw lodged in an elm
It has more geese in it
90.
Every breath, a crutch
91.
Dandelions miners' headlamps
92.
I sang: What is love to a fault?
93.
You sang: We drank the sun when it glowed in broth
It very rarely did, it very rarely did
94.
Then that month in actual Seattle when you said you couldn't
sleep if I was watching so I left
to watch fire-escapes, afraid they might sleep if I didn't
Noticing first the way the pulley release mechanism that separates
the last rung from the sidewalk takes two to land
And how unbearable when that gap is less than a foot, but still
95.
Then second: can the metal melt?
96.
Third: if I were asked to write a guidebook
for young fire-escapes I would need to tell them they are ribs
without hearts unless they are filled
by fire with people who want only
As any good heart would ...
What runs through you, running you through ...
Passion rhymed to passing ...
97.
The knife appears curved because it is near the guitar
I sang: Their waists such finely broken ankles are
98.
If any meet my eyes, they'll know
They'll send them back
99.
Even instinct isn't instant
As the unfaded section of wall paint where a painting was
with still the label by it, Winter
100.
Snow coming now like tissue after tissue from a box
101.
This window propped by the street I
see through it
I hide myself in brightness
102.
The plane never lands
103.
Then now the sense of perpetuity, who could ever wait
between eating and swimming?
Not eat one cough drop after another?
Not start every letter, despite nothing happening:
This morning, I?
104.
Or not draw a small V as though a gull seen
from a distance or a migration
of geese every time
through the day I think of you every
minute
105.
Then dressed for you, as the avalanche in
a bedsheet, and leapt
from a stepladder at your cue:
I sent the rain to tell you I haven't died
Which I made you repeat because I loved the sound
and suspense of it, as though forgetting the cue
106.
And sang: Each hummingbird the weight of a testicle
Send the rain to tell me you haven't died
107.
We don't do much except paint over the stains
or rub them around so
As though you can clean simply
by rubbing
Or heal enough likewise, if you can ever
heal enough, either by work or rest, the other
108.
Outlast this song
109.
You who read with lips moving always only
breathing in, exhaling only
to turn a page
110.
If I say the tea is sweet, does it matter how?
111.
And I sang: Isn't it also balance, to be always flinging?
112.
Dawn a sieve, a nerve, a seizing up
113.
And I sang: Please don't do to me as I have
And: I do not wish
And: Tell me of the heart that exists
A Children's Story (On a Theme from Donald Justice)
for Jay Thompson
Much of his life occurred some years ago like little
snow thickening in a lane the white
in her teeth and eyes moved him like childhood
loss, as though they were already
former lovers. March she stood like a church with plains
around it even with Chicago
around it how lazily memory has it all the missing depths and rain
blown in toward our dishes like dust
in turning light as this girl put on one of Mozart's minor
symphonies. Who wouldn't want to think of it
they sped their pace to leave the others she moved like wind near
a church on the plains his body felt a few degrees of change.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Annulments by Zach Savich. Copyright © 2010 Zach Savich. Excerpted by permission of Colorado State University.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents Poem After Last Night (1) Poem After Last Night (2) Poem After Last Night (3) The Mountains Overhead A Children’s Story (On a Theme from Donald Justice) Privately Real Time Deep Cover Cardinal Song Delible Reversible Sun Thin Horse Humility Mirror Dark Of the Emperor’s The Gallery’s City AcknowledgmentsWhat People are Saying About This
It is the poet who, undistracted by the imbecile telegraphy of this moment, dares to sustain a sustaining sound I most esteem and most warmly embrace. Zach Savich has written a book both intimate and vast, both tender and acidly candid. And with his long poem, 'The Mountains Overhead,' he has entered that visionary company of poets who, by overturning Babel, lay the heavens at our feet.
Sparse, spare, these lines nonetheless overflow with a sheer and brilliant imagination—'The crows: hearing our voices through wires'; 'the horses hold themselves like torches'; 'the sun a dial tone . . .'The tension between minimalism of form and maximalism of concept and feeling gives this work a vivid, oddly crystalline, momentum. The central long poem unfolds one small leaf at a time, yet resists accumulation; instead it presents us again and again with the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the slightly uncanny: what would it be to sing instead of to say? This book gives us an intimation.