The Objectless Place, an Ether Twist
The no one in my experience is the no one with a finger on the trigger, with a hand on the gun, the nothing that has happened since the cedar mill burned down and some places escaped within its sootblack source. The lack of a village infects us. The no one I envision could rip my heart out and does not suffer with organs himself. The father I have never met but whose profile I recognize when it comes together in the cellar of my eye from the little pieces washed ashore of me bit by bit. His ache in the algae, his mind the smashed syringe. The strength of his jaw in the wash of sand. The closed pores of his daily lack of speech gleam beautifully in any light. The other side of a bottomless, teething lake is not impossible. The geese are not already extinct. It is not the bare trees that make me wish for the many avenues of music, but the knowing that they will grow leaves again until no longer double-jointed, until all the choices are no longer frightening, until they seem one green grasp when I imagine they exist.
Jennifer Militello
A Flinch of Song (Tupelo, 2009)
Jennifer Militello is the author of Flinch of Song, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award, Body Thesaurus, forthcoming from Tupelo Press, and the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail. Her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Best New Poets 2008. She can be found online at www.jennifermilitello.com. You can purchase Flinch of Song from Amazon in the UK (I couldn't find it at any of the independents I tried) or Powell's in the US.
1 comment:
The perpetual "absent presence" which we can be haunted by is wonderfully articulated here. So many phrases and images I want to ponder at length but the dexterity of the concise sentence which ends "doesn't suffer organs himself" is especially satisfying. I have recommended these readings to others. Thanks! :)
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