You keep your hands in them to get warm. You slip your hands into them when you don't know what else to do— a pose that supposedly conveys an air of nonchalance. A casual vibe. Like, I'm chill. Or Don't mind me, I'm just leaning against the wall here, trying to blend into the atmosphere. You've learned to stay just like this, especially when you're unsure of how to mix and mingle, make small talk; after a while, even the waiters walking around the room with little trays of hors d'oeuvres forget about you. In 1991, two German tourists came upon a mummified corpse frozen halfway to its chest in a pocket of ice, somewhere on the border between Austria and Italy. An archaeologist determined that this guy, christened Ötzi the Iceman, lived around the year 3,300 BCE. When he was found, he was still wearing a cloak of woven grass, shoes and leggings of animal skin. His belt had a pouch dangling from it— an outside pocket containing a flake of flint, an awl made of bone, some kind of scraper and drill, dried fungus. The contents of his stomach included partly digested food from at least two meals before he was killed: ibex meat, wheat, deer and chamois meat, herbs, roots, fruit. Inside the gastric pocket, he'd also harbored whipworms. And you could go on and on, exploring the body as if it were a bottomless hamper, an envelope of assorted curiosities. You feel around coat pockets and find lint balls, crumpled receipts, an old piece of gum; quarters, one half of a pair of lost earrings. In the early 1900s, there was something called a beer pocket inside a men's jacket or vest, expressly for carrying a bottle of alcohol. Women used to be able to carry a square of cloth, yarn or thread, keys and scissors in ample pouch pockets. But now, if women's clothes have pockets, they're so much smaller than men's. You'd think someone decided they'd better not be hiding any secrets, better not be given extra space of any kind.
On Fission
(with lines from Jesse Lee Kercheval) The sudden weight of skin and heart makes me start to cry—as if I'd spent a whole afternoon shucking wrappers, peeling rind after rind to get to the seed; or needling and needling a cavity in the chest. And still there was no end to it. I know this feeling from its many incarnations: scent- spilling tree in the night, foghorn whistle, shadow of a moth wing before the moth itself bangs on the screen. This late in life, I am still always trying to resist words like forlorn, with their long centuries of loss behind them, their habit of loosening whatever they were attached to or bound. Bound as in bond, as in a chemistry of atoms, their orbitals and shells able to hold only so much until the moment of breaking.
Birthday card
Thursday, my birthday, now twenty-seven years.
A pretty fair morning, I rose and after writing a while in my study I went forth. To my office, where I told Mr. Hawly of my thoughts to go out of town to-morrow. Hither Mr. Fuller comes to me and my Uncle Thomas too, thence I took them to drink, and so put off my uncle. So with Mr. Fuller home to my house, where he dined with me, and he told my wife and me a great many stories of his adversities, since these troubles, in being forced to travel in the Catholic countries, &c. He shewed me his bills, but I had not money to pay him. We parted, and I to Whitehall, where I was to see my horse which Mr. Garthwayt lends me to-morrow. So home, where Mr. Pierce comes to me about appointing time and place where and when to meet tomorrow. So to Westminster Hall, where, after the House rose, I met with Mr. Crew, who told me that my Lord was chosen by 73 voices, to be one of the Council of State. Mr. Pierpoint had the most, 101, and himself the next, too. He brought me in the coach home. He and Mr. Anslow being in it. I back to the Hall, and at Mrs. Michell’s shop staid talking a great while with her and my Chaplain, Mr. Mumford, and drank a pot or two of ale on a wager that Mr. Prin is not of the Council. Home and wrote to my Lord the news of the choice of the Council by the post, and so to bed.
my birthday comes
on a white horse
comes to appoint me
in all my voices
to be the most himself
in the hell of age
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 23 February 1659/60.
Ridgerunner’s Dilemma
far from the monoculture
up in the hills here
and there you can still find
original patterns
new wrinkles in the ridgeline
a rare lichen
a nearly lost recipe
for disaster
the way a chipmunk can race
across a creek
ridge running you rise and fall
on crests and dips
of a sine wave
here an old charcoal hearth
there a borrow pit
returning to woods
you teeter through talus
clamber down cliffs
far from the suburban
absence of fear
where deer without hunters
spell understories without natives
following animal paths
you remember all the ways
to be animal
crawl on your knees
through rhododendron tunnels
to a place where yellow birches
rear up on their roots
and foamflower leaves recline
on sphagnum cushions
maybe you stumble
on a small forgotten stand
of old-growth trees
glowing in the low sun
full of character
like all those who live
long lives out in the weather
and you wonder knowing
how your heart might break
whether to come back
absence can grow anywhere
the ground turns white
Old turnpike
In the morning intended to have gone to Mr. Crew’s to borrow some money, but it raining I forbore, and went to my Lord’s lodging and look that all things were well there. Then home and sang a song to my viall, so to my office and to Will’s, where Mr. Pierce found me out, and told me that he would go with me to Cambridge, where Colonel Ayre’s regiment, to which he was surgeon, lieth. Walking in the Hall, I saw Major-General Brown, who had a long time been banished by the Rump, but now with his beard overgrown, he comes abroad and sat in the House.
To my father’s to dinner, where nothing but a small dish of powdered beef and dish of carrots; they being all busy to get things ready for my brother John to go to-morrow.
After dinner, my wife staying there, I went to Mr. Crew’s, and got; 5l. of Mr. Andrews, and so to Mrs. Jemimah, who now hath her instrument about her neck, and indeed is infinitely, altered, and holds her head upright. I paid her maid 40s. of the money that I have received of Mr. Andrews.
Hence home to my study, where I only wrote thus much of this day’s passages to this and so out again. To White Hall, where I met with Will. Simons and Mr. Mabbot at Marsh’s, who told me how the House had this day voted that the gates of the City should be set up at the cost of the State. And that Major-General Brown’s being proclaimed a traitor be made void, and several other things of that nature.
Home for my lanthorn and so to my father’s, where I directed John what books to put for Cambridge.
After that to supper, where my Uncle Fenner and my Aunt, The. Turner, and Joyce, at a brave leg of veal roasted, and were very merry against John’s going to Cambridge. I observed this day how abominably Barebone’s windows are broke again last night. At past 9 o’clock my wife and I went home.
the rain and I
out walking
an overgrown road
where nothing is a thing
ready for tomorrow
my hat is infinite
and holds up the void
at home my fat books
turn into bones
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 22 February 1659/60.
Adopted
The word was whispered among relatives behind the gurgling coffee pot or over beaten laundry, but tested out in the open by schoolmates. Planting doubt, they meant to hurt, insinuating I was merely changeling or impostor, taken in out of pity. For years, I wore my name like a coat with a secret pocket, my face a shield over one I might not ever know. If I was not made from the same pure blood, why did the bed I lay in make a perfect imprint of my shape? Why was a particular future pressed into my hands? Evenings, when owls began their plaintive interrogation, I cracked open roasted pumpkin seeds until my lips grew pale from salt, as if one might yield an answer. I'm learning to put my faith in what remains, the way a traveler moves through the landscape: leaning into time and gravity with no other retinue than this body taking in the measure of each change.
Withdrawn
In the morning going out I saw many soldiers going towards Westminster, and was told that they were going to admit the secluded members again. So I to Westminster Hall, and in Chancery Row I saw about twenty of them who had been at White Hall with General Monk, who came thither this morning, and made a speech to them, and recommended to them a Commonwealth, and against Charles Stuart. They came to the House and went in one after another, and at last the Speaker came. But it is very strange that this could be carried so private, that the other members of the House heard nothing of all this, till they found them in the House, insomuch that the soldiers that stood there to let in the secluded members, they took for such as they had ordered to stand there to hinder their coming in. Mr. Prin came with an old basket-hilt sword on, and had a great many great shouts upon his going into the Hall. They sat till noon, and at their coming out Mr. Crew saw me, and bid me come to his house, which I did, and he would have me dine with him, which I did; and he very joyful told me that the House had made General Monk, General of all the Forces in England, Scotland, and Ireland; and that upon Monk’s desire, for the service that Lawson had lately done in pulling down the Committee of Safety, he had the command of the Sea for the time being. He advised me to send for my Lord forthwith, and told me that there is no question that, if he will, he may now be employed again; and that the House do intend to do nothing more than to issue writs, and to settle a foundation for a free Parliament. After dinner I back to Westminster Hall with him in his coach. Here I met with Mr. Lock and Pursell, Masters of Music, and with them to the Coffee House, into a room next the water, by ourselves, where we spent an hour or two till Captain Taylor came to us, who told us, that the House had voted the gates of the City to be made up again, and the members of the City that are in prison to be set at liberty; and that Sir G. Booth’s case be brought into the House to-morrow.
Here we had variety of brave Italian and Spanish songs, and a canon for eight voices, which Mr. Lock had lately made on these words: “Domine salvum fac Regem,” an admirable thing.
Here also Capt. Taylor began a discourse of something that he had lately writ about Gavelkind in answer to one that had wrote a piece upon the same subject; and indeed discovered a great deal of study in antiquity in his discourse. Here out of the window it was a most pleasant sight to see the City from one end to the other with a glory about it, so high was the light of the bonfires, and so thick round the City, and the bells rang everywhere. Hence home and wrote to my Lord, afterwards came down and found Mr. Hunt (troubled at this change) and Mr. Spong, who staid late with me singing of a song or two, and so parted. My wife not very well, went to bed before.
This morning I met in the Hall with Mr. Fuller, of Christ’s, and told him of my design to go to Cambridge, and whither. He told me very freely the temper of Mr. Widdrington, how he did oppose all the fellows in the College, and that there was a great distance between him and the rest, at which I was very sorry, for that he told me he feared it would be little to my brother’s advantage to be his pupil.
who am I this morning
private as the sea
employed to do nothing
in a room by ourselves
voices of great antiquity
out the window
Christ’s old sign
in the distance
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 21 February 1659/60.
Whole Heart
It isn't nothing to know even one moment alive— by which the poet who wrote those lines meant there's some cost, barter, or exchange. What she means is, to feel so keenly is a blade that can cut both ways: misery or euphoria, invincible or exposed. I think of that story about a daily offering of fruit tossed into a king's treasury room, until the accidental discovery of their jeweled hearts— How could no one have smelled or seen ripeness and its head- long rush toward decay? The dizzying scent of ammonia, the slipped and speckled skins; a multitude of ants and flies eating what others discarded. Unbearable desire; rot or ferment: all that requires surrender until nothing remains but beautiful bone.
Bartleby
In the morning at my lute. Then to my office, where my partner and I made even our balance. Took him home to dinner with me, where my brother John came to dine with me. After dinner I took him to my study at home and at my Lord’s, and gave him some books and other things against his going to Cambridge. After he was gone I went forth to Westminster Hall, where I met with Chetwind, Simons, and Gregory. And with them to Marsh’s at Whitehall to drink, and staid there a pretty while reading a pamphlet well writ and directed to General Monk, in praise of the form of monarchy which was settled here before the wars.
They told me how the Speaker Lenthall do refuse to sign the writs for choice of new members in the place of the excluded; and by that means the writs could not go out to-day. In the evening Simons and I to the Coffee Club, where nothing to do only I heard Mr. Harrington, and my Lord of Dorset and another Lord, talking of getting another place as the Cockpit, and they did believe it would come to something. After a small debate upon the question whether learned or unlearned subjects are the best the Club broke up very poorly, and I do not think they will meet any more. Hence with Vines, &c. to Will’s, and after a pot or two home, and so to bed.
morning off-balance
I am at my books
thin as a wind
on the marsh
I raise the new day
on coffee only
to be poor
and meet in a pot
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 20 February 1659/60.
In which a Party for the Living is more Fun than one for the Dead
She was told to cleanse herself in the waters of her own absolution. She was told there's no requirement for a new, crackling bundle of failure to feed the fire. She read about a woman who invited all her friends to celebrate her birthday, but in the form of a funeral. She was still very much alive, yet they read eulogies to make it easier for all to assess the past. Afterwards, they toasted each other with champagne, ate slices of cake that would have been left as offerings to the dead. Unsurprisingly, no one said banalities like This is what she would have wanted; this is what she liked or didn't like. She was still there to say how much she enjoyed the music, how much she admired the flowers and candles and wine. Nobody offered up thoughts or prayers. No animals were slaughtered to please an absent god. No one talked about the end of the road or coming to terms. Whoever was there wanted to be there; whoever was not, didn't.