Poetry: Dawn Corrigan

Apprehension Ramified

They took the books down from the shelves
in the final days, to use as kindling.
My uncle and I kept kidding ourselves

that what we saw didn't mean anything,
the soldiers practicing their footwork
on the square that last lazy, open spring

when we walked to the theatre, vast and baroque,
where the teeming crowds would stand on their chairs
and whistle at him through clouds of smoke

as again he sang their favorite airs:
_Banish your gloom! The death of chaos leaves
more room for order in our universe!_

Given Time
_What do hands and leaves reveal in withering?_
- Amanda Pecor, "The Coastline of Britain"

Space is the final frontier, according
to a late-century TV program,
though everyone knows the final frontier
is time and we're all battling against
its borders in vain. In my uncertain time
I would like to read the text of the law
prohibiting operation of the bus
while anyone is standing forward of
the white line--does it tell a gruesome story
of ghastly pain on an altogether
grisly day: the bus filled to bursting,
and in the midst of a heat wave, so all
the humid and dizzy bodies threaten
to melt together into one gummy blob?
Were children involved?--Foolishly morbid,
I know, but lately I seem to need stories
of gory dying--or surviving. Of course,
the text of the law probably contains
no such story. A writer whose work
I admire (McPherson) described how our
legal system has no room for anecdote--
a tricky dilemma for those of us
who can't speak any other way should we
dare a run-in with the law--though he wrote this
twenty years ago and perhaps things have changed,
or so I assume from the shows splattered
all over TV which reveal that suddenly
we're infected with a massive dose
of logorrhea and everone blandly
tells the whole country things I'd rather conceal
like this morning when I pulled a bandaid
off my hand and caught a glimpse of my own
old age: water had collected under
the bandage and wrinkled the skin well past
anything I'd ever seen from staying
in the bath too long (I don't care for baths);
the top of the knuckle was ridge-riddled
and the underside was a map of deep grooves.
_Are those mine alone, as individual
as fingerprints?_ I wondered. I didn't
like it much, either way. Yesterday
a woman on the street held an umbrella
although the sun shone. _A parasol,_ I thought,
you don't see those much these days. _Her skin,_
I thought, and as she approached I saw her face,
as white and translucent and wrinkled
as my finger. She had white hair,
a flowered dress and a yellow purse,
low white heels. She said _hello_ as we passed
and I thought we must both belong to
the same sisterhood of women who walk down
the street and eat by ourselves and aren't
afraid. She was lovely and now I want
to be just like her when I grow up.
I'm always looking for models of old age
because I plan to live a very long time.
Recently a man I know wanted
to talk about that scene in the _Odyssey_
when Achilles says it's better to be
a serf on earth than Underworld King.
_I'm not sure about that,_ my friend said.
_Oh I am,_ I replied, and then felt bad
when I saw he thought I was championing
atheism when all I meant was life is short and
the other long (_Eternal_ he'd amend) and
I'd rather grab as much of this as I can.
My uncle who had AIDS told everyone he'd kill himself
before he let the disease get him but then
he changed his mind and hung on like the last
gingko leaf on the tree in his courtyard.
This upset some of his friends--it was hard
to see him so sick--but right up to the end
there was sweetness to be had amid the grief.

 

 

 

 

Bravado Psalm

God of Diseases, what have you done
with the man who used to live here?
That man with the carnelian ring
who applied bees to his skin and awaited
the sting; who sought you everywhere;

Who summoned the variegated angels,
swallowed them all
and begged for the germ
of wonder to appear.

Apparently you did not hear.
Instead you cast him out
to drift among the fountains.

And that was that, you thought.
But I've come with a message: God of Plagues,
the man with the carnelain ring regrets nothing.
He would join the same club again
and again, and he's not the only one.

We know all your names. We're not afraid.
Come to the dark place if you dare;
We'll be there, waiting for you.

 

 

 

 

Sacred Mysteries of the Library

In this place all is accounted for
and I am the one who does the accounting:
I am the woman who checks in the books.

First, when they arrive, against the order list
to ensure we've received all titles
we asked for and only these, none added

or missed; then I classify each book
by subject so when you look at its card
in the catalog you'll see all the headings

under which it might fall. Maybe you think
if you're looking up a book I can assume
you already know its subject, but here

we still have customers who wander in
without a specific object in mind,
who browse the catalog and room until

they find what it is they were meant to find,
and no matter what you say, I believe
we always will. At least until the library

is no more which, if I'm any judge,
won't be soon. The age of computers
has arrived, they say, but from my view it might

as well be happening on the moon;
at least it's off to a slow start here,
a town where the fastest thing we see is

the trees growing old and an ill wind may blow
but it only brings more of the same thing,
it's just the old breeze that blew in the night

round a girl on her knees, and the neighbors
caught sight, and thirty years later they still don't
forget that her name was mine. Now I'm

the librarian. I check in the books.
But please don't think I'm against all change;
I've tried to update, though we're still caught

halfway between Dewey and the LOC.
A few years ago I proposed we convert
but they voted it down and we still use

the Dewey numbers, the ones they know.
For subject headings, though, it's up to me
and I chose to use the LOC.

They send an updated index every few years.
Inside those pages an entire world
lies concealed, a world larger than this one

and only revealed in glimpses,
in headings like _Letter-carriers diaries,
Horror and Terror_ or _Bread industry,

the corrupt practices of_. I might spend
an entire afternoon dividing
everything I know into _Names of persons,

Corporate bodies, Places, Classes of persons,
Ethnic groups_ and _War_ before the faces
draw me back: the cat on one branch, the bird

on another--outside the window--and inside
the word _titian_, pronounced by a girl filled
with the glow of her first _Nancy Drew_.

I watch the door waiting for the rush
to lull, feeling the pull of the piles
of new books. When the customers leave

I touch the covers before I open them
and pluck sentences like fruit, a single
sentence from each, and with all these words I weave

a story: _In the book of the lazy garden
a woman sits at a desk classifying
evidence under 'Names of persons,'

'Corporate bodies,' 'Ethnic groups' and 'War';
outside a cat asleep on one branch,
a bird on another. It's a nation

we're destined to sweep away and replace
with something so strange we'll scarcely know
it's human, a nation where to see

is not quite the sorcery it is to surmise--
A lie, this, but in the long view
less pernicious than some others--

We've caught you, Witch, surprise, surprise!

The cat on one branch, the bird on another:
this is how things stood.
Footlights would not improve the grave,
only heaven would.

A civilization ready to evaporate:
This is so but they live as though it weren't.
Entombed in rituals they stay in one

place and stick at one job and imagine
that's the way to be long-lived and happy
and clamor for security, but there is none._

 

 

 

 

Message in a Bottle

The sea os full of horses
the sea is full of rivers

the sea is full of fishes
that battle other fish

the animal inside me
wants to fuck with everything

the statue by the fountain
is thinking about something

I've been teasing the volcano
it doesn't frighten me

the sea is full of wishes

the statue by the fountain
wants to marry a nice woman

better stay away from me

 

 

 

 

 

Talking to Greg on the Fourth

It's Independence Day
in a year when they've made a movie of that name
and Tom and I tried to get in
but they were all sold out
so we came home and watched three
movies at once on TV:
one with Annette Funicello
one with John Wayne
one with Tom Cruise
and I wondered what it would be like
if we could combine them all into one movie
someday technology may allow this
but so far we aren't able

Now I'm sitting alone at the kitchen table
just taking a little breather
before the festivities begin
earlier I was alone too
I felt lonely then and I wondered why:
maybe because I'm not in love with anyone I thought
but then I decided, no, it's because I miss the ocean
which always gives one something to do
on a hazy summer day
but then I thought, no, it's because I miss you
we we're in love exactly
but something like it
that went on and on
and for me goes on still

The smell of meat on the grill
is coming through the window
it smells awfully good
even though supposedly I don't eat meat anymore
but if you were here maybe we'd go
have a burger and some fries
a Coke or maybe a beer
I don't remember whether you eat meat
and of course maybe you've changed
your mind about it since we lived together
but either way if you were here maybe I'd be able
just this once to persuade you

but this is impossible to do
since you live in New York
and I live in Salt Lake
two cities that couldn't be more different, really
you near the queens I love
in the erotic city
I think of as home
although I've never lived there
for more than a month at a time
I in a place
ruled by a despotic church
where I go to school
which also feels despotic
though sometimes I manage to find
something erotic in it
being essentially an optimist

though a rather unkissed
one lately, as I think I mentioned
a month ago on TV
I saw a program that divided up
women in the movies
into different categories:
the _Spunky Tomboy,_ the _Ingenue_
I can never decide whether I want to be
a _Sultry Diva_
or a _Wisecracking Dame_

so I try to be both which is lame
and leaves me nowhere in particular
in the eyes of those I want most
to impress
a sort of bundled-up Mata Hari
without a headdress
things don't always turn out
the way you expect
the way I thought this poem
was going to come out in _In Memoriam_ quatrains

but already my interest in it wanes
as does yours, I'm sure
recently I also came across the phrase
_intercourse in every direction_
it's from Freud, I think
and it's exactly what I'm after
though I don't know how to go about it
but I think the point was
that we all have it anyway
whether we want it or not
what a relief

like the smell of beef
coming through the window
it's another reminder that sometimes
we don't have to do a thing
and things come anyway:
late-afternoon summer rains and someone
good to have a crush on and a holiday

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