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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781781720363 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Seren |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 64 |
| File size: | 131 KB |
About the Author
Kathryn Maris is a creative writing teacher and a poet. She is the recipient of several awards, including an Academy of American Poets Award, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Yaddo.
Read an Excerpt
God Loves You
By Kathryn Maris
Poetry Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Kathryn MarisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78172-036-3
CHAPTER 1
What Will the Neighbours Think?
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? – Lamentations 1:12
What Will Happen to the Neighbours
When the Earth Floods?
In the foreground there is an isolated flat slab of rock on which some helpless humans have taken refuge just at the moment when the flood is welling nearer and is about to cover them.
– Goethe on Jacob More's painting 'The Deluge'
Sometimes I mistake Noah for God, but sometimes I mistake
God for no one.
I mistake Noah for God because even in his arms I'm
abandoned.
From my High Ground you can see my neighbours, but it's hard
to look.
So here are my glasses.
Is that a raft? Because I think it's a boatman who hangs his head
in the storm.
But is that a raft or is it a rock? Could it be one rock lower
than Ararat?
I love my neighbours and I think God would love me for this.
But I covet my neighbours too, and God might proscribe this if
he had laws.
Look at my neighbours with nothing to covet. Now see the
container I live in with too much to hold.
There are my neighbours; here's my container.
Here's me, the doves, the griffins, the dogs, the bears, the boys,
and my man who can look like God when the weather's
not clear.
And the weather is unclear a lot.
I remind him of the neighbours, but he says, 'Look. I don't want
to be reminded of the neighbours.'
I can be distant with him, but I feel affection when he eats.
When he eats, he bows his head like that boatman who probably
isn't a boatman but a neighbour pressing against the weather on
almost the last land in the world.
The Witch and Macduff Exit
My Neighbour's House
My neighbour was a bitch
in Stoppard, a witch
in Shakespeare, a lawyer
on The Bill,
but she's 'herself'
when she's over the wall
with her daughter,
my favourite child
next to my own,
who are friends with her one day
and not the next,
like when my son
accused her of stealing
a Gameboy cartridge,
and my daughter repeated
an awful thing
I say about the English,
that they're the rudest people
on the planet.
But as for my neighbour:
I smile through tears
when she and her daughter
are over the wall
playing together
and I'm watching
from a location
akin to
a box seat.
She might have a box seat too –
my other neighbour
definitely does
because she knows
everything I do.
All the world's a stage
and all the neighbours
merely players
with their exits,
like the one my neighbour made
with Macduff
in the middle of the day,
a little too happy –
and I thought I knew the plot.
Every tear
I shed for her
is – what's that called? –
anagnorisis,
or just plain catharsis,
or moving on
from Aristotle,
there's always Freud,
who'd call this 'projection'.
Our houses sit
in a row
all of them built
in the fashion of their time,
and you could make the mistake
of calling them
identical.
So when my neighbour
is with her daughter,
I try to grasp
her motivation,
dry my tears,
stand up straight,
enter the room
with the television,
smile and project,
'It's a lovely day!
Let's go out to the garden,
and have a play.'
Why I Will Gladly Take Your Man Away
Because there is time
and because I can claim Him and then declaim
to you, 'I know not what I do,'
and because I've settled for impotence,
while you have omnipotence,
if you've got God, then watch Him hard
because I will take Him if I can
and I know that I can because I have heard
He loves me as much as He loves you,
and because you have God and I have no one
but a ladder, which I drag to the beach
and drag in the rain
and which wobbles in the wind
so I can place it in the right place
to climb to Him in His big home.
My mother preaches: Marry up!
All's fair in love and God, girl, so take Him
and keep Him, and ask that He keep you
for Himself who can provide.
Just ask, and I tell you – you'll receive!
Hilary Has Left the Building,
Unless She Hasn't
Hilary did something to her house:
no one knows exactly what
she did, but it is wrecked
and no one can enter for fear
of the whole thing collapsing.
The firemen stood outside her door
for a few solid days
but they left to save another house
on which they could use their hatchets –
and that had a better outcome.
Her parents and friends have knocked
at the door gingerly,
as have employees of the council,
and even a devious estate agent
who saw a plot of land at the ready.
I, too, knocked,
questioning her, as a teacher must,
and though it had always been in her nature
to give me the correct answers,
this time there was nothing.
The matter remains to this day:
if she is still in the house
there can be no hasty decisions;
but if she has left the house
the structure can be razed without regret.
Kill a Tree, Kill Me
My husband, whom I loved enough to live
in any country with, warned me against
his own, the Netherlands, because he sensed
my utopian preconceptions were naïve.
I thought the Dutch were unremonstrative
and green, were droll, couldn't be influenced,
rode bikes. He claimed my views were unbalanced,
and furthermore he'd be uncooperative
if I attempted bicycling. It turned
out that we moved to neutral ground: a house
near Paddington. A fig tree on the side
grew big after ten years. So I discerned
him with his saw last week, and near him was
a brand new bike he'd bought for me to ride.
This Is a Confessional Poem
I am guilty of so much destruction it hardly matters
anymore. There are so many thank-you notes I never wrote
that sometimes I'm relieved by the deaths of would-be
recipients, so I can finally let go of the shame.
I was awful to someone who was attached to the phrase
'social polish', as though she'd acquire it through repetition.
I took an overdose at a child's 6th birthday party.
I was born in a country which some have called
The Big Satan. I abandoned the country for one
that is called The Little Satan. I wished ill on a woman
who has known me for years and yet never remembers
who I am – and now she's involved in a public scandal.
I have been at parties where I was boring.
I have been at parties where I was deadly boring.
I have worn the wrong clothes to sacraments, not
for lack of outfits, but for a temporary failure of taste.
I'm a terrible, terrible liar, and everything I say is full of
misrepresentation. I once knew a very sweet girl
who stabbed herself in the abdomen 7 times.
She believed she was evil and thought 7 was a holy number.
Besides that she was sane, and told me her tale
out of kindness – because guilt recognises guilt,
the way a mother can identify her own child.
I met her in a class called 'Poetry Therapy'
in which the assignment was to complete this statement:
When one door closes, another opens.
I wrote At the end of my suffering there was a door,
making me guilty of both plagiarism and lack of imagination.
I was the vortex of suffering: present, future and retroactive
suffering. The girl tried to absolve me.
'Don't be Jesus,' she said. 'There are enough around here.'
I know I should thank her if she's alive,
but I also know it's unlikely I'll rise to the task.
Darling, Would You Please
Pick up those Books?
How many times do I have to say
get rid of the books off the goddamn floor
do you have any idea how it feels
to step over books you wrote about her
bloody hell you sadist what kind of man
are you all day long those fucking books
in my way for 3 years your acclaimed books
tell me now what do you have to say
for yourself you think you're such a man
silent brooding pondering at the floor
pretending you're bored when I mention her
fine change the subject ask 'Do I feel
like I need more medication' NO I don't feel
like I need more medication it's the books
don't you see don't you see it's her
why don't you listen to anything I say
and for God's sake books on the floor
are a safety hazard remember that man
from Cork who nearly died fine that man
fell over a hurley not a book but I don't feel
you're getting the point the point is that a floor
is not an intelligent place for books
books I have to see and books that say
exactly where and how you shagged her
what shirt she wore before you shagged her
I can write a book too about some man
better still about you I can say
something to demonize you how would you feel
about that ha ha why don't I write a book
about how I hoover your sodding floor
and how you've never once hoovered your floor
why can't I be a muse why can't I be a 'her'
what does one have to do to be in a book
around here do I have to be dead for a man
to write me a poem how do you think it feels
to be non-muse material can't you say
you feel for me what you felt for her
can't you say I'm better than that woman
can't you get those books off the floor?
Will You Be My Friend, Kate Moss?
My daughter's in your daughter's ballet class.
I sat beside you at the Christmas show?
I really loved the outfit you had on!
Three years ago I tried to emulate
your look in Grazia: you can't believe
how hard it was to find some knee-high boots,
a tunic-dress, and earrings just like yours.
The icon of my generation, you
were motivation when we exercised.
You were The Waif – that's what we aimed to be –
and yet it's so unfair you got the blame
for all that teenage anorexia.
We'd never look like you no matter what:
I saw that when you walked into the class
(your daughter was ecstatic, by the way!)
your terrifying cheekbones mocking mine.
The line 'Alas, poor Yorick!' struck me then:
your head could easily be on Hamlet's palm!
And speaking of: I heard your friend Jude Law
is in New York reprising Hamlet at
the Broadhurst Theatre on 44th.
I miss New York – I wish that we could go.
I have this friend, Nuar, I'm sure you'd love:
she's smarter than the two of us combined,
and stunning, too, and has two little girls.
At Yaddo, where we met, she'd quote Foucault
and Nietzsche on the buffet line. She held
my hand one creepy night when we got lost
around the lake beside her studio.
I really miss Nuar, and Suki too,
whose sense of style is on a par with yours.
Let's all go out one night! I'll do my best
to stick with you despite the fact that I'm
a hypochondriac and petrified
of class A drugs. We have so many things
in common, like you're pretty much my age;
we share initials; the circumference of
our thighs is basically the same. (I checked.)
I also saw you surreptitiously
admire my silver space-age dress! You did!
Now that my daughter's been moved up a grade
will this be adios amigo, Kate?
She's not disconsolate about the change
but then she's at the age where all you say
is 'will you be my friend.' Remember that?
I Told No One for as
Long as Possible
I had a terrible dream
my daughter was dead.
In a refrigerator.
At the morgue.
My daughter was dead.
I told no one.
She was at the morgue.
It couldn't be true.
I told no one
for six weeks,
so it wouldn't be true
my daughter was dead.
For six weeks
the morgue rang.
'Your daughter is dead.
Come take her away.'
The morgue rang
again and again:
'Come take her away!'
I left her there.
Again and again
I avoided friends.
I left her there,
afraid I'd crack.
I avoided friends
but I went to work.
And then I cracked.
I told the boss
when I went to work,
'My daughter is dead.'
I looked at his face,
his busy eyes.
'Onze dochter is dood!'
I cried to her father.
'Her Byzantine eyes
looked into mine – '
I cried to her father
in my sleep.
He said, 'Look at me.
It was a terrible dream.'
On Returning a Child to Her Mother
at the Natural History Museum
Hello, my name is Kathryn and I've come
here to return your daughter, Emily.
She told me you'd suggested that she look
around upstairs in 'Earthquakes and Volcanoes,'
then meet you and her brothers in the shop.
You know that escalator leading to
the orb? It's very long and only goes
one way, you can't turn round. She asked me if
I knew the way back down and would we come
with her into the earthquake simulator –
that reproduction of the grocery shop
in Kobe, where you see the customers
get thrown around with Kirin beer and soy
sauce, things like that. She told us stuff about
your family. Apparently you had
a baby yesterday! That can't be right:
you're sitting here without one and my God
your stomach's flat! She also said she'd had
an operation in the hospital
while you were giving birth one floor below.
I know, I know: kids lie and get confused,
mine do that too. She talks a lot. She's fat.
She may not be an easy child to love.
I liked her, though. I liked her very much,
and having her was great, the only time
all day my daughter hasn't asked me for
a dog! We got downstairs and funnily
enough we found your middle son. He ran
to us upset and asked us where you were.
But here you are – exactly where you said –
the shop! Don't worry: I don't ever judge
a mother. Look at me: my daughter drank
the Calpol I left out when she was two;
I gave my kids Hundreds and Thousands once
for dinner while I lay down on the floor,
a wreck. I know you well! Here's Emily.
I Imagine We Will Be Neighbours in Hell
... in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun. It reminds me of everything I failed at,
and I water it carefully.
– Sarah Manguso
We couldn't be sisters, so let's be neighbours.
You can water your stone plant
and I'll climb stairs that hang in my vacant world.
We'll know our neighbours; we just won't know
they are our neighbours. Hell could be that:
ignorance of the proximity of our neighbours.
You'll weep for your plant, but sadder still:
I'll believe in what I do. And sadder still:
we'll never know that thin walls hide
the other neighbours – the men who loved us
then sent us to hell
for lacking souls even in the world.
One floor above, someone who envied our youth
we didn't think was youth, or success
that was really grief, will perform an everlasting tap dance
partly to annoy but mostly because she has no choice.
If I cared or even owned a broom, I could pound at the ceiling
and shout: Come down and love the misery of company!
God Loves You
Nobody Is Not Loved – placard on a council estate near Elephant and Castle
Always hoped that I'd be an apostle knew that I would make it if I tried. Then when I retire I can write the Gospels So they'll all talk about me when I've died. – Jesus Christ Superstar
God Loves You
1. God's image was in the mirror and God's image was my grief. And lo, I knew I was not loved by Him and wept. And I knew shame. For though I was young, I was not young enough to weep in the face of the Lord who made me.
2. In sorrow, I set out. I prayed that God might look on me in my search for signs of love in His great world.
3. The first sign was clear: the call from Tom, Tom-Who-Loves-Me-Not. When he spoke unto me, he said three times, 'I love you,' and I knew it was He, for Tom is like God in sound and in grace. And that was a strong sign.
4. On the second day, there were finches in the air. I saw with my own eyes this flock yield the form of a heart before me.
5. The next sign, too, was full of meaning. It was a sign. And it was revealed to me thus: the Damut Estate. And in that name I read these words: 'Deus te amat.'
6. On the road there was a child who pressed into my palm a yo-yo, where it was written: 'God loves you.' And I thanked the child, held him and wept, for he was righteous, and he was called Matthew. But still I was unloved.
7. For if God is in the mirror, and if God is the mirror of our world, then the signs will be false, for the world will reverse what God has shown me.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from God Loves You by Kathryn Maris. Copyright © 2013 Kathryn Maris. Excerpted by permission of Poetry Wales Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
I What Will the Neighbours Think?,What Will Happen to the Neighbours When the Earth Floods?,
The Witch and Macduff Exit My Neighbour's House,
Why I Will Gladly Take Your Man Away,
Hilary Has Left the Building, Unless She Hasn't,
Kill a Tree, Kill Me,
This Is a Confessional Poem,
Darling, Would You Please Pick up those Books?,
Will You Be My Friend, Kate Moss?,
I Told No One for as Long as Possible,
On Returning a Child to Her Mother at the Natural History Museum,
I Imagine We Will Be Neighbours in Hell,
II God Loves You,
God Loves You,
It Was a Gift from God,
The Devil Got into Her,
Why,
Doubting Thomas,
Lord Forgive Me,
Last Supper,
My Father Who Art in Heaven,
Knowledge is a Good Thing,
Variations on Melissanthi's Atonement 1-3,
Iconography,
The Angels Wept,
Here Comes the Bride,
III Praise Him,
Angel with Book,
Metrical Charm 10: For Loss of Cattle,
Bright Day,
The Sun's Lecture Notes on Itself, You and God,
The Devil Will Find Work for Idle Minds,
If You Relive a Moment You Cannot Outlive It,
Assembly,
The Tall Thin Tenor,
Legacy,
Number Plate Bible,
Street Sweeper,
Acknowledgements,
About the Author,