eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609404208 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wings Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Calculus of Falling Bodies
Poems
By Geoff Rips
Wings Press
Copyright © 2015 Geoff RipsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60940-422-2
CHAPTER 1
COMPOST
for Gabriela
Grapefruit rind, onions' outer skin, pliant celery stalks, lemon gone
soft and gray underneath, what's left of what was used for soup
last night and what was salvaged from the refrigerator bin, all hauled
in a bucket by my daughter, poured into the darkening moist leaves,
turning to black, wet ur-matter, breaking down to the basics,
worms, pillbugs, bacteria eating and churning the arrogance of finely hewn form
— a maple leaf, for instance — until it can't be recognized, until
it can't be separated from the rest of the agglomeration of life, what comes before
and what comes after, what is living in single-celled simplicity,
what once lived, what will live again. Leaves and celery stalks
straining toward the only immortality that awaits us, turnips and beauticians,
providing fodder for our children and generations of children
and hogs and cucumbers and bacteria to come, so that they take us in,
turn us back to what we came from, our community of amino acids, our compost,
these singular forms just a passing fancy, a dance, a flourish,
while the real work of the world goes on here, not an arm's length
from my beautiful daughter's delicate hand, death churning itself into life,
the used-up not all used up, the carcass aglow, the spent husk served
as banquet for more life, bacteria feasting, the whole more driven
than its parts to survive. And the rest of it — people, lettuce, cows —
just aberrations to be tolerated, grist for the mill, fodder for the machine,
to keep it turning, generating heat at its center, the combustion of decay.
Feel the heat, I tell my daughter. She sticks a spindly arm into the center of the
heap, then
draws it back. Nice and warm, I say. Slimy, she replies,
turning in her purple dress and skipping away, past the peach tree.
Oh, how singular. How pristine. How I held her, pulled
from the center of her mother, bright-eyed, fur gleaming, wet. She looked me
in the eyes, as if to say, I understand all this already — let's move on. Skipping
down the hill, she has paid homage to decay and now is turning cartwheels in the
grass.
I turn to follow. How to consider this set against the cold stars?
The conceit of churning and returning. The empire of bacteria.
Chemical reactions. No real reason for it, except that it's work to do.
Orange rind, elm leaf, earthworm, the turn of my daughter's hand,
generating heat, generating heat at the heart of it all.
Dolphin
for Sascha
My younger daughter, who is six, can stand in the
middle of the backyard, a field, the universe, and
take it all in. This still small girl with large
hands. This summer we sat for long stretches on the
rocks of a jetty and watched bottle-nosed dolphin in
pairs drawing their perfect arcs among the choppy
waves of the channel. Sometimes they came within
twenty yards of where we sat. One smiled at me, my
daughter said, squatting on the rocks, chin in her
hands. She was not surprised; she was pleased,
thoughtful, feeling part of this world, the water
sloshing among the rocks of the jetty, all of it,
the sun going down, the breeze constant, smelling of
bait that fishermen had left on the jetty, the shrimp
boats ferrying by, followed by clouds of gulls
calling to empty nets, the Norwegian freighter
slipping almost silently through the breach, one man
standing on the long, barren deck, staring past us,
down the coastline, the ship's wake reaching us
minutes later, rolling into the rocks, splashing our
knees. All of it. Not far from here, five years ago,
nearly three hundred dolphin beached, belly up,
covered with a fungus. Such news has yet to reach my
thoughtful young daughter, now resting on her
haunches on the rocks, looking for dolphin,
calculating the world.
Wetlands
for Gabriela
So much of the world is floating.
The timeless dive of Kemp's Ridley sea turtle,
spiraling down, down in the deep green sea,
schools of amberjack gliding patiently
among the steel legs of oil rigs,
ling, sleek and unperturbed,
nurse shark hugging the bottom of the Gulf,
cruising two inches above the grit
of the ocean floor. Ponderous jewfish, not moving, waiting
to eat whatever the currents bring,
growing fat, huge, timeless,
missing the hormone that limits growth, a naturalist
once explained. The ever-expanding universe
of the self, hovering above the Gulf floor.
My pre-adolescent daughter asked just the other night
what hormones are. You don't want to know, we said.
They limit growth, we'd wanted to say.
But we'd be wrong.
Cormorant, gray heron, sandhill crane extracting
one stilt from the grasses, then the other, moving forward
slowly, eyes always on the movement of the shallows
in this place not quite water, not quite land.
Brown pelican, waddling out of the Pleistocene,
but when it takes its ungainliness to the air,
it too is floating. Rowing on currents of air
over the marshes, where it stops,
folds its long wings, then drops like a javelin into the stillness,
to emerge again like an oiled spectre from another age,
rocking on the water for only a moment, then flapping to become airborne,
floating again above the grasses, sandbars, shallows, lagoon and us,
its wings outstretched, so little effort, so far outside time.
So much of the world is floating,
as I stand,landlocked, watching my daughter watch the pelican,
then leaping herself, jeté on the jetty,
then again, arms thrust to the skies, then again
and she's gone.
I lift her up
for Gabriela and Sascha
I.
Snow still on the mountains above Taos. My daughters
are growing older. We park in the center
of the pueblo, tourists by the Red Willow waters
rushing like stallions, filling the banks. We enter
the pueblo at its heart, where small red willows
dip just the tips of branches into the gallopin maelstrom. They stand
by the rampaging chaos — its witness. Melting snows
and mountain storms in a churning rush to the Rio Grande.
My older daughter follows the tour guide closely, standing
by her as she speakss at cemetery, chapel, stream
Our daughter is eager to learn. She worships the tour guide,
who explains that the dead are wrapped and piled as one unending
body, generations sinking into each other, erasing time,
ribs spiraling down, the humus of a people on fire inside.
II.
There was a fire here. The church, a sanctuary in
more than name, where women and children gathered,
huddled against the onslaught of the U.S. Cavalry.
The Taos people would not concede the claim on their
world by an alien empire. Burned to the ground, the
safety sought found only in one another, in an
eternal embrace of generations. A sacred graveyard
now, marked off by the broken adobe walls of the old
sacristy. Crosses at odd angles. Mounds of bodies
— a nation's past piled three, four, six feet
high. Replenished as each old one falls
into his mother's arms. I wonder what my daughter
thinks about all this. The too palpable dead
where the Red Willow comes crashing. The play
in her mind unfolding, the ceaseless rush of waters
across an endless expanse of time. Families collapsed.
She won't walk with us today.
III.
My younger daughter is struggling to learn to swim.
Soon she will. She resolutely enters every motel
swimming pool but stiffens as I angle her body to
meet the water's plane. I lift her up. She trusts me
and doesn't trust me. But I'm all she's got in this
uncertain water. She's secure on land: ordering
nachos, she's on her own, telling the patient waiter
which chile to leave off, which cheese to use. As if
I'd planned this brief, mundane nirvana, this space
inhabited by daughters of seven and ten, pristine,
the rushing of Red Willow kept at bay for a moment. I
want to hold on, to bear-hug time. I know what I
have, but not how to hold it. We're at the mercy of
the onrushing waters. It's one thing to say, Stand
back. I try. But this is our moment in this
expanse, our sublime moment, the center of family
unfolded.
HALITOSIS OR I'M NOT SHERMAN AND YOU'RE NOT GEORGIA
When we kissed
death blew from your mouth
like a warm wind over Gettysburg.
I tasted blue- and gray-capped
bodies lying face to face,
row on row, fields of rotting wheat
and butchered hogs.
When we kissed
your death curled into mine
and our tongues
shook hands at Appomattox.
WHY I NEVER HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY TO YOU
Last week I went swimming
with no one I knew, only the yellow
wood light and the fish
that bumped me along. Returning
to my clothes, I found my shoes
had swallowed their tongues.
I now live in the back seat
of a green Ford coupe on the edge
of town. RFD. When the mailman comes,
I lock the doors and low
like a green Guernsey. The letters
he leaves from you I convert to milk.
Paris and the last time we were together
I was mad for the Rue de Rosiers:
the bagel-eyed French, the Yiddish
cafes. Here I could speak: "Challah,
Hamantaschen." But you were always tugging
the other way: your wet hair, patrician nose,
cold feet. You resented gefilte fish.
When your icy hand grabbed mine,
the lakes of New England froze over.
TRAFFIC
I'm late for work, idling now under a canopy of sycamores
where the runners have stopped on the curb, sweat
illuminating their flesh as they pace back and forth,
hands on hips or talking on cell phones, pulling
their hair back and wringing it out, twisting sweatbands,
unable to stand still, like horses nearing the starting gate, shifting
from one leg to the other, waiting for the light to change.
Why aren't they working? They take off at a trot, crossing
in front of me as I wait, late for a meeting that doesn't really matter.
Waiters, brokers,people who office at Starbucks,
trust fund babies, house flippers. Do they sing in the shower?
Are they still mulling remnants of last night's dreams?
Ear plugs set, tuned to their own music, the runners don't hear
what the world has to say, that the imagination founders
as you drive to work or simply wait, engine thrumming, for them to cross.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Calculus of Falling Bodies by Geoff Rips. Copyright © 2015 Geoff Rips. Excerpted by permission of Wings 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
Poetry, Journalism, Writing, the World xi
Compost
Compost 2
Dolphin 4
Wetlands 5
I lift her up 7
Resuscitation
Halitosis or I'm Not Sherman and You're Not Georgia 12
Why I Never Have Anything to Say to You 13
Traffic 14
Mowing in the Dark 16
Epoxy 17
St, Matthew's Passion 19
Something larger 20
Appeal 21
Aubade 22
Resuscitation 23
Personal Geography
A Landscape 26
New York City, The Way It Is 27
As I Was Saying 28
Ode to the Lesser and Greater Cockroach 29
Survival 31
Tonight the World Started Over 32
Looking for Work 33
Work 34
Madrid 1974 36
Fata Susanna, Don't You Cry 37
Faced with a Stalled Economy, They Try to Bring an End to What We Know 38
Dreams 39
Meditation 41
Driving 42
These Days 44
San Antonio 45
Mullet 46
Cleaning Fish 48
Dan Worked in a Nursing Home 49
The Seasons 50
It Can't Be Denied 51
Light Years 52
Thanksgiving 53
The Calculus of Falling Bodies
The Calculus of Falling Bodies 56
Harvest 57
Losing Uncle Ed 58
Shaking Hands 60
Hygiene 61
War is a Cure for Loneliness 63
At 51 65
An Ending 66
Things are gonna break 67
For My Father 69
A Walk in the Park 71
No End 73
What Is It? 74
The Art of Poetry 77
Acknowledgments 79
About the Author 80