Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
(OF INTERNATIONAL WATERS)
Water, whatever it communicates, remains always at a level.DAVID HUMEPolitical Discourse of 1755
As far as the eye sees, little garments of rain ...BARBARA GUEST "Constable's Method"
... the third commonness with light and air ...WALLACE STEVENS "A River of Rivers in Connecticut"
Though this bright world of all our joy is in the human brain ...WILLIAM BLAKEThe Book of Urizen
PARTITA FOR SPARROWS
We bury the sparrows of Europe with found instruments,
their breasts light as an ounce of tea where we had seen them off the path,
their twin speeds of shyness & notched wings near the pawnbroker's house by the canal,
in average neighborhoods of the resisters,
or in markets of princely delphinium & flax,
flying from awnings at unmarked rates to fetch crumbs from our table half-spinning back to clefs of grillwork on external stairs we would descend much later;
in rainy neighborhoods of the resisters where streets were taken one by one,
where consciousness is a stair or path,
we mark their domains with notched sticks of hickory or chestnut or ash because our cities of princely pallor should not have unmarked graves.
Lyric work, flight of arch, death bridge to which patterned being is parallel:
they came as if from the margins of a painting, their average hearts half-spinning our little hourglass up on the screen.
PRACTICAL WATER
What does it mean to live a moral life
It is nearly impossible to think about this
We went down to the creek The sides were filled with tiny watery activities
The mind was split & mended Each perception divided into more
& there were in the hearts of the water molecules little branches perpendicular to thought
Had lobbied the Congress but it was dead Had written to the Committee on Understanding
Had written to the middle middle of the middle class but it was drinking Had voted in cafes with shoplifters &
beekeepers stirring tea made of water hitched to the green arc
An ethics occurs at the edge of what we know
The creek goes underground about here
The spirits offer us a world of origins Owl takes its call from the drawer of the sky
Unusually warm global warming day out
A tiny droplet shines on a leaf & there your creek is found
It has borrowed something to link itself to others
We carry ourselves through the days in code DNA like Raskolnikov's staircase neither good nor bad in itself
Lower frequencies are the mind What happened to the creek is what happened to the sentence in the twentieth century It got social underground
You should make yourself uncomfortable If not you who
Thrush comes out from the cottony coyote bush glink-a-glink chunk drink trrrrrr turns a golden eyebrow to the ground
We run past the plant that smells like taco sauce Recite words for water weeter wader weetar vatn watn voda
[insert all languages here]
Poor Rimbaud didn't know how to live but knew how to act Red-legged frog in the pond sounds like him
Uncomfortable & say a spell:
blossom knit & heel affix fiddle fern in the neck of the sun
It's hard to be water to fall from faucets with fangs to lie under trawlers as horizons but you must
Your species can't say it You have to do spells & tag them
Uncomfortable & act like you mean it Go to the world Where is it Go there
ENCHANTED TWIG
Sunlight tosses the small grasses its brain method. Once it gave us a dynamic hurt but we've gotten over it. Wobbly jay: the aspen is see-thru today,
waiting for the Ice Age, & alphabets appear in every stem of it, tail shaking to a Y not far from ecstasy.
The diverted creek sounds sad so maybe i better take our dowsing stick out to the field, for our Y will pull &
find buried water. With twig lines on our face & humming. With up &
down for the world needs a water-finding stick for bringing wrecked water sideways beneath blue mist — For water wants to be equal. Water wants to be equal & the world needs women with sticks & dusk husks, since they have taken the husks of damselflies when they straightened the creek, when the golf course needed its tight white globals (though the cowbird's yellow beanie eye will survive the terrible pocked ball) —
Where there is a break in the fence near sweet horses we will skip through
& hold down our stick in a shiny chipping field, cabbage white butterflies in pairs, pennyroyal — Diet Pepsi plastic on its side
& to the diverted creek & old creek bed say Meet this dowsing wand Come in —
Mist rose this morning as i crossed the field; heard the crooked cries cry creek to me,
cried creek to me unable that the world wants water girls to work with mice, chipping off the blossom part of bitterbrush to save for later. Forced to mark them out shy. Thanks for letting us know, hydrogen-times-two; leave the periodic table & come to the dowsing stick, oxygen;
come to the water table — we are taking this finding down to delphinium,
angelica, mimulus, letting water go or we will go at night,
among introduced grasses, under the moons called Duir or Harvest,
Deer Paw the Earth & Gort, our stick will dip down in a Y for Yes it's here. Aspen, don't quiver, there's root parties a plenty & we will be wicked with our wick in our turn — < the stick will summon meandering streamsfor penstemon dandelion hair face,
even the fungus beetle; those. Those qualities below. We miss our mother.Dear mother, daughter, pilot, poet, sister,
student, teacher, waitress, worker, water girls & girlie men, don't do their war; take Y rods, angle rods, bobbers, pendulums & loops for the stick is the witch with dew,
electrons & glaciers the stick does do;
for you miss your mother too & you can take your broken Y stick past the field they trapped energy in, poor stream,
in their system there, to pull your water table up for water to be equal like the warbler building nests against the imposter egg, will use that twig to mend the place where they have cut California in two.
One at a time the simple drops will come, though Agricola warned not to use the enchanted twig but you must come, it has gotten serious!
So in binding oxygen to thin wild hydrogen & so in the earth you can bring energy from your stick signatures, earth's meridian roused from a source,
we will squint our ears to the babble & make for them a wavelength over the old new field —
BALLAD AT THE STATE CAPITOL
When we climbed the steps of the Capitol in the middle of winter the middle of main, there were pale new earthworms washed up on the steps, flat pink circles around their necks as we passed the hollow in the soldier's face where he sat in the park not thinking of the law of If any man steal a minor son he shall be
put to death & so on. Shared light curled under the dome as we walked. As we crossed. When we rose in the elevators,
we rode with platform managers & retail managers,
investors of mutual funds & stock options, with slim portfolios that were feeling a little bullish, even slim women were feeling a little bullish with their trim leather pouches
they took to the staff while the Dow was up & the up was down past guards with chains that were effective. Through double doors we walked with our stop-the-killing data we brought through double central doors where If any man put out the eye of another his eye shall be put out etc.
we went up dressed like sunrise, for the limits of color
are the limits of our girls. Officials waited like squid for us not pretty of course like squid in the sea, propped up in numbered offices when we took our motion in to them but they flopped. Flopped floppety forward because of having no spines. Floppety forward they couldn't sit up.
Washington knows best, said Room 2141, Probably not
but Hmm said Mr. Speaker himself. Maybe Yes but No, said Ed in 2148. Why try, said Jenny O. Here is some cake! It was written on the wall past the chief-of-staff's head that If any man harm the captain injure the captain or take away from the captain a gift presented to him by the king he shall be put to death Raised Seal
Not Required. Thanks for dropping by! said the Canciamilla-squid as we read the writing past his plutocrat head, in endless vengeance decimals of pi, two eyes for an eye, he said, Bye, ladies, goodbye! As we carried our vitamin shadows out. As we shook their flaccid tentacles off. As we slipped. When we slipped down the steps
in the middle of rain, the earthworms adjusted the alphabet so the next thing may not be the next thing, they wrote. They spelled in calligrammes & codes. When they brought back Ishtar's cuneiform. For the love of myrtle, cedar & rose that came from dust. The vine sisters twisted in stone as they turned in earth to speak to us.
RHOPALIC AUBADE
And a black-
bird follows you from city to city, changing names as it flies (osle,
merula); it sheds its first music at daybreak (Amsel) as it drops letters that will float in a river of your father (lon dubh, lon dobh)
or into the slight raindrops of your mother
(melro, merle noir), onto a forest or desert floor
(merlo, karatavuk, ) where the ochre worm feeds quietly in starlight. With a ring around its famous eye (kostrast), restless and a little shy between trills at night (musträsas, zozo), it flies to places where gods are called Disposers and yet are commensurate with life. So when another name springs open in your heart (komunsae, [TEXT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL TEXT], mirlo, KOC, kos)
— or in the aqua crucible of dawn — syllable and bird (merel, svarttrost)
long for each other in the description, dragging lovers to light (mustarastas,
solsort), dragging meanings as dense and particular as food or as pieces of songs,
as existence that hopes for itself (juodasis stazdas, , chernyi drozd, Al-
Ta'er, [TEXT NOT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL TEXT], A-Sho'hroor, [TEXT NOT UNREADABLE IN ORIGINAL TEXT], Sha-ch-rur) as spaces in songs after morning —
INTERNATIONAL DATELINE
A row of hyphens exists in the sea
You squint to find it x miles down
You saw it in the magazine
& eyeless fish that swim under it
You left one perfect day for your friends
What will they do with a perfectly left day watching clouds on Yellow Mountain
touched by night in the Hall of Speaking
A row of red hyphens exists in the sea in scales of fish in dropped-back hours
You the seer of your life your friends the seers of theirs
touched by sunrise on one side only before a moon touches you on the other
in blue or local blue eternal time
They keep you with you you keep them with them
You keep them with you They keep you with them
THE EIGHTIES
AN ESSAY
A friend asks, "What was at stake for you in the Eighties?" She's trying to figure out Bay Area Poetry. There was Reagan's New Morning for America. Garfield dolls stuck to the backs of windshields with suction cups. At the beginning of the Eighties I was married & at the end i was not. The Civil Rights Movement became kind of quiet. Feminism became kind of quiet. An editor told a woman he couldn't read her poems because it said she was a mother in her bio. Many thought about word materials. Environmentalism got kind of quiet. The earth spirits were not quiet. Buildup of arms. Iran-Contra. Savings & Loan scandal. Tax cuts gave way to library closings. The Challenger went down with the first woman astronaut aboard. People read letters to her on TV. Mini-golf places with purple castles opened on Highway 80 in the Eighties. Chernobyl exploded & the media announced it as a setback for nuclear energy. People ate out more because of tax cuts. i fell in love with a poet. Earth dropped its dark clock. A few wrote outside the margins. Mergers & Acquisitions. The Bay continued to shrink. Many got child-support checks. Many came out. Deconstruction found the moving circle. A few read Lacan. Guns 'n Roses Sweet Child o' Mine. Our daughter drew pictures of trucks with colored fur. She had 24 ear infections in one year so why were you not supposed to write mother in your bio. Many wrote the lyric with word materials. The Soviet Union began to free prisoners. America freed fewer prisoners. Superconductivity. Gorbachev became president instead of something else. One son went to college. We cried. There was no e-mail. Art pierced the image. Blue-rimmed clouds hurried past outside & in. Some wrote about childhood; some wrote about states of mind; some wrote word materials instead of about. Symbolist poetry, by then 120 years old, pushed the dream nature of the world. Hypnotherapy. i began the trance method. In the Eighties, Mt. Tam stayed the same. Mt. Diablo stayed almost the same. Many species died & would not return. At stake. One son started a punk band; he had a one-foot-high purple Mohawk. i listened to the tape with another mother trying to make out the words. Oliver North held up his right hand. Reagan turned off his hearing aid. Sentences fell apart but they had always been a part. Yeltsin. Walesa. Wall comes down. Romania. El Salvador. Noriega. Some elderly folk lived on dog-food when their pensions collapsed. People worried about children, lovers, ex-husbands, jobs. Consciousness stayed alive. Interest rates leapt through the vault of the sky. We cried & cried. We made food & quit smoking. We learned the names of wildflowers & forgot them & re-learned them. This was only the beginning. There's so much more to be said in answer to your question.
(i looked up from my reading;
the one who is always visiting stood on the rug in one of her Europe moments;
i asked her whether i should be writing when i'm not writing or not writing when i'm not writing —)
PHONE BOOTH
There should be more nouns For objects put to sleep Against their will The "booth" for instance With coiled hidden wires Lidded chrome drawers Tipping up like lizards' eyes We looked out into rhymed rain We heard varying vowels Rimbaud's vowels with colors Orange or blue beeps Types of ancient punctuation The interpunct between words A call became twenty-five cents Times in a marriage we went there To complain or flirt Two more decades & we wised up Got used to the shadow The phone booth as reliquary An arm could rest On the triangular shelf A briefcase between the feet A pen poked into acoustic holes While we gathered actions/wits For magic & pain The destiny twins Folks scratched pale glyphs Onto the glass door while talking One day we started to race past
& others started racing Holding phones to their ears Holding a personal string To their lips If there are overages There might be nouns for The clotting of numbers in the sky So thick the stars can't shine through A word for backing away From those who shout to their strings In the airport while eating We loved the half booths Could cup one hand on the mouthpiece Lean two-thirds out to talk to a friend Sitting in the lobby The universe grows We are dizzy as mercury We are solitudes aided by awe Let us mourn secrets told to Fake wood & the trapezoidal seat Perfume in the mouthpiece Like a little Grecian sash Why did we live so fast The booth hid our ankles We twisted the rigid cord As we spoke It made a kind of whorl
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Practical Water"
by .
Copyright © 2009 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.
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