03-25-2015
Joy Katz
Which From That Time Infus'd Sweetness Into My Heart
When the lead crystal hangs dully,
In the wondering as I write this,
During the carboniferous period,
Having finished the meze,
After the dog goes back to bed,
In the continual hum,
After we buckle on our parachutes,
As ash settled over Brooklyn,
When the Moors ruled in Europe,
Next summer maybe,
After the morning hosts uncross their legs,
Every four to six hours,
That becomes a basket tossed weightlessly
On the day we adopted a boy,
When I step off the quickly dropping elevator,
After the seclusion of the cellarage,
The night before I left for college,
During intermission,
When someone with a clipboard called our name,
At the ideal time,
Pending fire department approval,
When I turn to the sink for a minute, the light switch,
Often, hungry for marvel,
After nothing in process can come transforming,
And then, one day,
What seemed fair in all the world,
Before the tap water discolored,
During the oiled sound of a dog dream,
In the sun's year on earth,
Oil, boil, squeak, uplift
In the evenings,
In the far back of the drawer,
During the cocktail hour,
Eventually will I
After I have come down the hill and up the hill
Eventually,
After we have had a few lessons,
At night my mother,
When she first entered the air,
In the equal sign of an allowed hour,
When the power went out,
Every so often,
After the woken up and gone returned
When I asked her how she saw herself,
After my son has kissed me the more times,
That becomes a basket tossed weightlessly
As the opposition receives non-lethal assistance,
In the wondering as I write this,
On a seventy-six-degree day,
This hour, for example,
Now, passing between my shoulderblades,
Before the jury deliberates,
After four minutes (at sea level),
As I grow bigger in the wanting,
As I ride around on blue ikat,
At the urgent intervention of ground troops,
When my father returns from Africa,
On the anniversary of
When he gets his genius back,
After three sets of repetitions,
As you began treading these long thresholds,
As Ho Chi Minh witnessed our names,
After the woken up and gone returned
Before the music stops,
When I try remembering her voice,
In 1978,
"What next?" you say,
In the middle of a budget battle
That becomes a basket tossed weightlessly
As a baby is handed through the air to us,
In the final seconds of the fourth quarter,
Halfway through the preface,
After they set us on fire,
It was time for a
Tomorrow,
When the sugar is dissolved,
Before the poet began his third ode,
Till at last, pop!
When I understood there was a chance,
-Which intifada was that?
Again. Again. Again
(in the patience of),
Before you can say it's cool as measuring salt,
Whenever we rushed to the embassy,
When it was noon,
In the middle of the night,
In that hour of my life, to have
A moment, so plastic,
As I stood at the foot of her bed,
A basket tossed weightlessly
Long after the data is useful,
While thou on press'd flowers dost sleep,
As he meets with the rebel leadership,
Midway through the onrush,
As the lead crystal spins dully,
Until she solved the difficulty,
Some thirteen years ago in a gale of wind,
On a foil packet of shampoo,
After a prayer with no words,
When a spoon leaves a firm imprint,
During the last known hours,
As the meltdown hit groundwater,
When we signed off on everything,
And then, a face: the woundable face of a boy.
Mother’s Love
I
Give the child up, says the warm blanket
Give the child up, says death, says
ruination, says torture, give the child up we will care for him
say the men with carapace faces
You can grieve, says the net
you are my favorite, says falling out a window
Grief has rules, says the raven, grief has grades,
sidelines, crowds to cheer you on
say the friendly faces smeared with dung
you can ace it, say the men with beetle-shell faces
II
The baby is tearing up tissues one by
one each
in pieces with a strengthless
ripping
On my eyelids the fibers linger
Pale filaments of fairy dust, the hairs
of donkey ears
creatures under spells
The fairy makes a sound like cellophane
The baby answers in lighter-clicks
pah of little flame
The baby looks upward into a weather system
it settles round his head, a crown
He makes a sound like eyeliner coming wet and thin onto a brush
He makes a sound that wet and silken
you are getting very
young you are getting very
very
Wake mother wake this is how they take your baby
when you are drowsy with enticement—
III
His voice comes like a veil onto my eyes
Lightly a mother’s bridal veil crumbles
The sweetness has come up to my collarbones
shows yellow under my chin
The mother is marked, tired. Tired and marked.
“Let’s play on the bed”
(Don’t speak, it will pull out the slow drip
anesthetic of his voice)
He pulls a book off the nightstand
I am helpless
We are addicts, an old boyfriend would say
This is not that. But it is
I am helpless
My hair fills with sparks
He is eating the rare book
curls the corner back so prettily
So what, say the hairs on my arms
so what, says the water rising in the room
He is melting all the books, tasting them
eating the corners—
In between, that sweet voice of no-words-yet
His sounds turn words to eyelashes, a fine net
a white powder
IV
The baby pulls tissues from the box
Out! and then
the next
one he pulls
that one one more
with equal attention to them
all the pleasure is up to my skull
again the feel of my hair, new-cut, on my back
a rabbit asleep there
He pulls pulls
a white, still rabbit from the box he would
hold it up till it became vapor
The air gathers in pleats of vapor
I lie back
We are pulled together toward—
Are we are alive on a planet
“My son and me”
(try to speak)
The words heavy as cured meat can’t push them
outward into the street the sun
The baby holds up an erasure
tears it, tears off a room
V
floats over the edge of a breath
of a stand of milkweed
His breath exists as sand, slipping over my elbows
Water is pouring over the bed
Where is any fierceness
Traffic holds the house in a five-point harness
click
There is no traffic
no door just the edge of an infinite pour
not even that
open your eyes
Anne says: “it is like mother’s love”
(heroin)
What is it
I asked her
what does it feel like?
VI
Left alone with the baby is boring
woodfloors knees clockfalls make rounds
of hours
Then the light, milkily, comes
We are sugared in a medium, he and I
He is smiling
Happiness is on me like a scratch in a car door
The floor is dirt and chalk and cool as a henhouse
He has crawled into in the bathroom
“Can you open the door?”
“Can you close the door?”
The tub’s cool slope
frames his head with stone
I smell like done bread
Turn over the loaf, tap tap—
hollow sound—door open. He is smiling
A fishing line, clear, thin
draws through my legs then tight across my chest
a line fine as rapidograph
constant, narrow, even, drawn
round my wrists, shoulders, I am bound
back to front, tied up lightly in
VII
in what?
The light
is beautiful again.
Outside in the stopped air the animals have stopped.
The baby points at the light.
“?” he says
Answers sparkle and turn like coins on a line
Look at this look
how you are a fish-mother, silvery and still
on the pond-bottom
can’t breach the surface where the boy
churns up hard light—
There is a spreading through me like snowmelt
He is in the milky world of the bathroom, the daytime
dry chill, he is suspended in marble
All at once he points at me
Then he is out the door, stepping onto a silver wing
How to describe to you this height, this opening?
Death Is Something Entirely Else
Department of Trance
Department of Dream of Levitation
Department of White Fathom
Department of Winding
Sometimes my son orders me lie down
I like when he orders me lie down close your eyes
Department of Paper Laid Gently
Department of Sound of Sheets of Paper
he covers me with
then sings
I like best the smallest sounds he makes then
Department of This Won’t Sting
Am I slipping away
Department of Violet Static
as if he were a distant station
Department of Satellite
My child says you sleep
Department of Infinitely Flexible Web
and covers my face with blankness
Department of Tap-Tapping the Vein
Department of Eyelash
I can’t speak
or even blink
or the page laid over my face will fall
Department of Clear Tape in Whorls and Double Helixes on the Wall
He says mama don’t look
Department of You Won’t Feel a Thing
I cannot behold
Department of Pinprick
He will not behold
Department of Veils and Chimes
of Lungs Afloat in Ether
I like this best
Department of Spider Vein
when I am most like dead
and being with him then, Department of Notes
Struck from Thin Glasses Successively at Random
I must explain to my child that sleep
is not the same as dead
Department of Borderlessness
so that he may not be afraid of
Department of Fingertips Lightly on Eyelids
so I can lie and listen
not holding not carrying not working
Department of Becalmed faint sound of him
I am gone
His song is the door back to the room
I am composed of the notes
-from All You Do Is Percieve
___
