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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819572042 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/08/2012 |
| Series: | Wesleyan Poetry Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 127 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
space
* * *
time
space-time:
The four-dimensional space
whose points are events.
Stephen Hawking
glossary for A Brief History of Time
And what you see outside of you you see inside of you ...
"The Thunder: Perfect Mind"
Nag Hammadi Library
The Spark
Once you were immortal in the flame.
You were not the fire but you were in the fire; —
nothing moved except the way it was already moving;
nothing spoke except the voice in back of time; —
and when you became your life,
there were those who couldn't,
those who tried to love you and failed and some who had loved you in the beginning with the first sexual energy of the world.
Start the memory now,
you who let your life be invented though not being invented had been more available
and remember those who lit the abyss. The boys in science fair.
You were probably hall monitor at that time weren't you,
and you admired them;
on their generator, the spark bounced back and forth
like baby lightning and you saw them run their fingertips through its danger,
two promising loops stuck up to provide a home for the sexual light which was always loose when it wasn't broken,
free joy that didn't go anywhere but moved between the wires like a piece of living, in advance —
then later: how much were you supposed to share?
The boys sat in front of your house at dusk,
the ones who still had parents.
Sometimes they held Marlboros out the car windows and even if they didn't, sparks fell from their hands.
Showers of sparks between nineteen sixty eight and the
hands were sleek with asking sleek with asking; —
they had those long intramural after the library type fingers they would later put in you, — ah.
When? well,
when they had talked you into having a body they could ask into the depths of
and they rose to meet you against an ignorance that made you perfect and you rose to meet them like a waitress of fire —
because: didn't the spark shine best in the bodies under the mild shooting stars on the back-and-forth blanket from the fathers' cars —
they lay down with you, and when did you start missing them.
As Sacramento missed its yellow dust 1852.
When did you start missing those who invented your body with their sparks —
they didn't mind being plural. They put their summer stars inside of you,
how nice to have. And then:
the pretty soon. Pretty soon you were a body,
space, warm flesh, warm
(this) under
the summer meteors that fell like lower case i's above the cave of granite where the white owl slept
without because or why that first evening of the world. The sparks of your bodies joined the loud sparks of the sky —
And you carried it, a little flame,
into almost famous cities,
between the ringing of shallow bells,
pretty much like some of that blue tile work,
walking the bridge of sighs until you found the spark
on quilted bedspreads in small villages, as if the not-mattering stitching coming all 'undone' in the middle stood for a decade. You barely burned then;
sex grows rather dim sometimes doesn't it but it comes back.
Yourself half-gone into those rooms, yourself, a stranger.
You who happened only once:
remember yourself as you are;
when he comes to you in the revolving dusk,
his full self lighting candles, a little smoke he sings, the fire you already own so you can stop not letting him;
all love is representative of the beginning of time. When you are loved,
the darkness carries you.
When you are loved, you are golden —
(that's good, you got there;
should you make it part of the record?)
Thicket Group
... a burning liquid that was called the original force of Nature
— anonymous tenth-century alchemist
A Power
For some reason it's likely to think of the insides of a thicket as a five-pointed liquid star.
A group of us, not knowing how to stand in nature, in the sixties; each breath sponsored by that.
Possible friends nearby smelled like hemp, white tortillas and twelve-oz. Coca-Colas; the fire in their fingers talked back, had feelings.
Locating consciousness, where would you say it is; "it was the happiest moment in the first twenty years."
And, why do we seek to destroy it by changing?
mottled doves
garnets
Empty Spines
Magic fought with the ideal, time curved the barren glow, and animals called from their nests at the center of the world.
I had been a child being guessed at by onyx, fresh from nothing. Dimension's pawn.
My brother okayed the ground with sticks; when something called, we answered it. With a drop or two more of that inherited chemical we would have been a schizophrenic.
Empty spines of sticks filled up with liquid fire; they had done this before, we just hadn't been quiet enough to mention it.
Making theories of creation is about repetition, though even the infinite happens just once.
XX sticks cross-referencing each other
A Window
Had intended to climb out a window, but intended is not what makes it happen. Delicious to climb out a window. The weather was not the window's fault.
Smears on chrome fenders like pet clouds between which they might see a body coming curved to them. Before the thicket your mouth stopped off at a boy.
Going back a little: nearing them was faster; that which owned the thicket also owned the flower.
Either tell the story or don't. Narrative is such an either/or situation, like a window, just as sex is a metaphor for not getting it.
You have changed the assignment to Swirl: voice from a thicket; surfaces meet where you live into things. A body is a place missed specifically. They met you in your body, where you couldn't go alone.
The spell:
unable unable unable pretty soon
The Thicket
A power came up; it was in between the voices. It said you could stop making sense.
Have you seen it? Of course you have. Based on what? A red bird that caught fire on the alchemist's table.
The girls stood around in long paisley dresses, coyote cries coming through them, something frightened and being canceled. We weren't on drugs then. The thicket looked like a star of pub(l)ic hair.
You always want to control how everything will turn out, is the problem.
Suburban kids — on the edge of change — give up hope of being understood. Why did the fire need to rest in us after that fluttery little absolute terror of childhood.
(wands being on fire)
Dust Devils
A power came up. It flew toward the guessing Cloud. It was not as curved as night or straight as day.
Have you heard it? Of course you have. It settled in the lyndon-johnson desert, supervising funnels, eisenhower-bird-egg-head, stomach of peace and battles.
Standing before the thicket in long clothes not having sex. In the bible, you can't worship fire without worshipping dust, and whether you fought depression had everything to do with this.
A fire undaunted by the place where the years live.
To be patient with the kind of plot in which nothing happens, alchemists devised a burning water that didn't wet the hands. Elements mixed, swirled together, became decorative. Art comes from loneliness.
The Arroyo
— The perspective of lines or
innocence —
I love other bodies.
They always seemed to know the secret before I did ...
My mother has come outside to hang up towels: Cannon.
I'm in my nada body, I'm about ten dragging magnets through sand in the arroyo to collect garnets from iron filings ...
For others, it's "the ditch" or "the wash" or "drainage ditch" —
she's the thin expert at hanging out daily life. Squinting, I see she's either a I or a o who never makes a mistake outdoors ... pink towels, shorts,
sock sock / sock sock ... The sun is the mistake that works.
The dragging then the filings then picking out garnets with tweezers in the 100 degree heat of the arroyo —
She calls my name;
it brightens; it's years before my period: chrome glint of the abandoned fender; the doll's head softens near the jar. These garnets have backward facets. The present tense saddens them. Before the flash flood I can make it to the end of the arroyo where the hollow chalk couple has been shown having sex on a rock.
If knowing alternates with seeing,
dragging magnets through the sand thinking of them is the place where I am not.
Childhood is one of our low points.
When I cough, the doves fly away ...
She hangs up clothes her single, her nada humming, when she turns sideways she is gone. Pinch bird-beak clothespins. She uses my whole name to call me in
—)
A power comes up, it's in between the voices, it says you can stop making sense ...
The hollow chalk couple —
oh when I see them I will touch their penis;
it is the small blue tombstone turned sideways.
Touching it is the invention of the new. Touching the signs next to them — FUCK DICK (heart heart heart)
is the both invention. Sex and more exciting than doing it without talking —
I looked for the one who sought me without measure and the waters broke away ...
Waited for one who called but she had gone in. I called my love much later the same when I was not him.
The doll has become soft when left for about twenty minutes; white *s take over the eyes;
our garnets on wax paper like menstrual blood.
Floods will come over the earth but the hollow's better; winds replace the chalk couple with sand;
the hawk sweeps and is gone; coyote; various night viceroys with yellow eyes;
Hollow body fills later (in legs with) specks of time,
boys with wandering and orderly hands; laughter; such as — oh D.
oh P., oh L., oh P., and oh A.
I loved other bodies. Even those I did not love (those of this generation, we all ...)
Cruel lovers and kind, when stoned in the south and beaches between ... And the faceless chalk couple haunts me now: taught: touch language with the north hand, flesh with the right;
even three decades later, in danger of sort of, the new disease and terror of backward,
convinced one self is not the way to live because we are lived through —
not to fail what was left blank —
I gather the little jars of the elements,
to show her;
within pure joy exists a kind of hollow,
the inverse river, the opposite water —
Early Sex
The one-celled creature brought to class in the drop of pond water took its main hunger around on the slide,
it had yes for a skin and a thousand little hairs for feet to help it decide ... You wanted to love the others
no matter what,
swam over the edge of yourself, swam in the place that seemed like forever,
you loved when they visited you,
you changed shape for them and when they left you were the same as water
It's just that it's not quite time to write them ... What shall I do while I'm waiting.
— Wait harder, it said.
Orion's Belt
Read this by your own light,
little body;
read this with your eyes closed;
under the three stars you learned the origins of love.
When they took you out,
you would push the buttons of their jeans with your thumb
and the stars stretched in Orion's belt like the three mysteries at the start of time.
Dentyne and dope on their breath — mostly Dentyne.
Long warm breath
between watching spaces, between the light that left Orion a million years ago, and they
tried to see no body up there, no guilty party,
but to speak of the forces that made them: hydrogen, helium,
like legendary women,
and at the edge of the universe,
a little buzzing — like a phone left off the hook ...
They lay on the hoods of cars
(warm engine: ticking) and you undid their belts; —
Orion lay on his right side,
then on his left, his belt undone, the three stars
doomed to circle like the three mysteries at the start of time:
why it happened,
why we suffer,
and how love bothers at all ...
When you think of those you will not touch again in this lifetime
you own a few points on the one body.
Some made you happy.
Everything else —
the pale sword of the hunter,
the uplifted sandal,
everything else mostly fades in the folds of heaven —
Active Magic
You want to know where you are again?
Back in the middle of the interrupted everything third side of the double album,
the start of the night shift as eternity's waitress;
it's dusk, many years after the war,
you've crossed the same wild fields as before;
they've started selling uniforms of new dead soldiers,
gone back to putting peace signs on t-shirts —;
you're stepping lightly in the dream you can afford, the magic that was and always must have been for you —
A dusk ago, — Remember? don't you.
Remember? Look. You had an old soul. Killdeer landed in the fields out there,
landed in their sounds,
in what's already happening,
dee, d-dee,
near your dormitory room,
you stretched once like an oak tree,
many times like a laurel;
the ones who would be drafted came into your room and you had an old soul.
You had started the same soul five times, you were good at it;
the moon watched you one of those times peering in at you before you had lain down, peered in behind the loaded cypress;
the moon horizoned herself,
you told her your sexual secrets,
loved what she could not help
being farther then —
The ones who would be drafted came into the room (it's still possible,
the never happening); you thought you'd been sent to earth to rescue them,
said, leave them alone, they already have tenses;
they draped blue workshirts over chairs —;
the moon was doing her moon imitation,
old waitress, tilting herself like a tray,
said to the war, leave them alone,
they have what they want,
they don't need a future when they have a soul ... And why
shouldn't they have. (Headlights shattered them. Loud white damage of oncoming cars.)
You thought you'd been sent to earth to help them not to fight —
when they rained with the rain,
when they clouded,
they were the little bit almost,
a little bit Sacramento, in love with the magic of the active ground,
and you rode north or south with them,
on the backs of Triumphs, in the vans —
You afraid? Not really.
You afraid? Not really no. OK OK if you get afraid just tell me —
till you stopped in the middle of orchards with little hard crosses, in love with the magic of the active ground;
why, every seed moved!
Shook and shook.
Even the necklacey Woolworth's ones the spiders loved — and why shouldn't they have. Night was coming on —
it was dusk between the stages of the war. You would save them. Dusk lifted you with 2 fingers like a field mouse and set you down 2 hawks from here where you had done the other game,
pawn to queen four, the being active till you loved the mind and body of their world,
and lay in the low thin dormitory boats of those beds of theirs,
their noisy hands all over you —;
you know how mercury shakes?
You know how mercury shivers like tomorrow when you break the end off the thermometer?
You see your own face in the silver.
Active magic. You could become like that.
They gave you a body before they left, made love to you so easily it felt like spending money;
after the marching and the shouting they left the voices in your flesh ...
Some of them got free. Some left. Some died.
One fought the war in you.
When they rained with the rain,
when they clouded, in eaches and whens, the water streaming from their bodies as they left,
when their faces lay,
when your mouth lay, when their mouths lay down in the it of you ... You were home from that time, and why shouldn't you have been?
Imperialism failed. Such startled years for the world.
Medium countries swelling,
little countries bleeding, big countries turning into little countries as they have since the start of time.
You stared out at the coast —
radio flowers of sound from Los Angeles,
boats dragging accidents that hadn't happened ... A gull flies through two thirds of the shadow of another gull ...
You can't keep another person,
you know that. You had to give them up — couldn't save them;
You lean left in the hut and right in the magic. It's years since you have missed them,
missed them most of all while you were with them.
You broke free and spilled out all the unreflected light they left like the moon who has already healed her nothing —
wasn't she triumphant in her slim smile,
like one stripe peeled off a lighthouse;
they had added to your shadow where you were,
you had become a little bit them and were proud of the reflection,
proud of the crossing,
could expect to be recognized where the day was undoing the day and let the magic spread —
L.A. — Berkeley 1969–1994
Excerpted from "Loose Sugar"
by .
Copyright © 1997 Brenda Hillman.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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
I space/time,
The Spark,
(interruption),
Thicket Group,
A Power,
Empty Spines,
A Window,
The Thicket,
Dust Devils,
The Arroyo,
Early Sex,
(interruption),
Orion's Belt,
Active Magic,
II time/alchemy,
Cheap Gas,
Male Nipples,
An Event,
Chevron Tankers,
(visitor fragments),
Proud Energy,
No Problem,
Somewhat Anthem,
III alchemy/problem,
The Bat,
Symmetry Breaking,
C ode,
River Song,
(interruption),
blue codices,
the cliffs,
doubting chamber,
horizontal series,
deep noticing,
trap door,
spiral lullaby,
below below,
the escalator,
the cave,
visitor fragment,
various outposts,
high vortex,
blue square,
IV problem/time,
Time's Body,
(interruption),
Time Problem,
Band Practice,
Busy Week,
Being Busy,
Very Busy,
Really Busy,
(interruption),
The Particles,
Time Zone,
Early Vacations,
V time/space,
The Unbeginning,
The Mysteries,
Loose Sugar,
Two Rivers,
National Development,
Two Mothers,
(notes),
Two Brothers,
Stuck Tram,
Loose Sugar,
Red Fingernails,
Vanilla Continued,
The Corcovado,
Beach Photos,
Mother's Language,
Remembering Form,
(blank),
world/axis,
NOTE,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
What People are Saying About This
"Time in Brenda Hillman's poetry resembles loose sugar ground from the cane of Brazil, a vivid detail of her Brazilian childhood. It sifts through the 'deep noticing' of the poet as she matures in California. Memories (real or imagined) are gathered into highly 'scenic' poetics. I admire the way Hillman attaches a plumage (or energy) to her nude expressive details. I see Loose Sugar as part of the anatomy of the rare bird of 'autobiographical' experimentation."
"Time in Brenda Hillman's poetry resembles loose sugar ground from the cane of Brazil, a vivid detail of her Brazilian childhood. It sifts through the 'deep noticing' of the poet as she matures in California. Memories (real or imagined) are gathered into highly 'scenic' poetics. I admire the way Hillman attaches a plumage (or energy) to her nude expressive details. I see Loose Sugar as part of the anatomy of the rare bird of 'autobiographical' experimentation."—Barbara Guest