Sudden Prose Reprints: "Dear B" by Jennifer Militello

Dear B,

I knew it was a vision when I was killed and from my wound grew water. I knew it from the way my age gained speed. I was lost inside a place that looked familiar. A small moss at the altar. A splinter where I touched. When I went to find winter, I was born of the salt, I could only see my hands, I grew winded. I could only see my wrists. I grew like a forest, I knew me by my roots. I was on my knees and crying to be born. There was a gospel in my blood. Some things are impossible: I had already been sold to the world. Still there was a mystery, winter did not come. The way my pupils responded spoke volumes: they decided a window was a way of singing when they tried mixing laughter with a catastrophe of light. By listening, I was finally invented. I was the dog’s long voice, buying back the evening’s rattled coat of wings. I realized I was made of winter, and the will to carry on.

Jennifer Militello

A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo, 2016)


In the UK, you can purchase A Camouflage from Alibris here.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Conspiracy to Commit Larceny" by Jennifer Militello

Conspiracy to Commit Larceny

She she she—at the crux of what hurts—(the police came)—thin hospital sheets—(the air in my lungs exhaling)—(their flashlights searched along the dirt for the criminal)—(I was up against the car)—(they were gathering my glances)—the hospital room and her unclean body—(they were collecting my wildflower looks)—my memories as I said them—(in my mouth)—(their voices without bodies)—legs could not support her weight—(I was the criminal)—(they said as much)—what she perceived—(the darkness of woods and a small circle of headlights)—she reached for me—she told me they had left her outside the hospital doors—(I am all by myself)—I pull her socks from her feet—her feet are stones—my temples throb—(the policeman hears them)—(he puts me in a cell)—(he puts me behind the thick glass)—(he carves my name into the ink)—(he carves my name toward the hospital’s room)—the nurses turn her body to clean her after she vomits—her pale thigh—her marbled skin—her inability—(I am handcuffed)—(my fingertips are stained with ink)—(I have my identity)—the hallway smells like trying to keep alive—this geriatric wing—unfolds from my body like a—(flashlight dying)—bulb drifting—(false battery)—the window out to the river—a slowing barge—(I dream of guilt)—(they take my shoes)—(they take my belt)—she takes my hand and tells me—speak—(I sign the paper that speaks for me)—(they read me my rights)—(they speak for me)—a sad green room—I see myself in the mirror—(they see me in from the other side of me)—(they read me the law)—as I read she sleeps—as I read I feed her something that makes her sick—(I roll from bed)—the thin sheets—the bulletproof river—(its bulletproof glass)—(my voice buttoned to one side of it)—she reads my look—I tell her—(the policeman takes my arm and makes me) look—criminal—and finds my wound and touches it—tests it with an open flame—it changes color in me—it is not mine—she is waiting—her feet are cold no matter what I do—and bloodless—(this place is unable to reason)—(unstained)—I rest my eyes—I am surrounded—(there is nowhere that is not this scene)—last glance at days that end—(they put me in the car)—(they call in my name)—her name above the bed is ending as I speak—I carve my name into the scene—(my hospital is not believing)—is my hope—my heart stopping when I see the moments—(the policemen say what I mean)—(and I am clean)—(despite the act)—(the theft)—the rain—(the last attachment they make to me)—(guilt)—in a world betrayed—by flesh—

Jennifer Militello

A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo, 2016)

In the UK, you can purchase A Camouflage from Word Power Books here.

Sudden Prose Reprints: Jennifer Militello's 'Autobiography Toward a Study of the Thousand Wounds'

Today we're fortunate to have a prose poem from Jennifer Militello's new volume, Body Thesaurus, published by Tupelo Press:

Autobiography Toward a Study of the Thousand Wounds

Doctor, this is my diary. It begins with my confession to you.

I was hung before my throat could cry the rivers. I was hung like an animal and the rope had a bite: when I touch, I touch a razor of teeth, an amen on the edge of each of them. I am adrift. I can see the pier with the loose rope fallen. I can see the fog and the oars that will not last. I have eyes that are lanterns so I will not wreck. And yet I cannot steer myself toward land. I am at the end of risk. I am at the end of my fragmenting hands. I only have nerves to tell me how far. I only have nerves; the rest of me is ill. What I twist into rears toward frost. I twist into the immigrant rain. I am again at sea, made sick with floating. As it is, I am rich with different versions of myself, and I do not know an antidote for me.

I am an impossible equation proven to exist. With the ache of layers yet to peel off, made of features and a clockwork heart whose mechanism breaks as death sits, wreckage in the face, smells foul, and is blackened. Accidental fracture is a gift.

What I see is not so much a lost figure as an arch of rain, so many windows, and an expression like wool. What I see is not so much the fields of me as the silver beneath, the skeleton, its trace elements, as one falls to the hands and knees. What I see is not so much the childhood collapse or the stories the sea-branches cherish and break, or the way I move air in front of me from its delicate weave. What I see is a child’s breath at the shoulder like a thief. A chemistry of sin that earns our keep. That makes of me an enemy when the enemy is scarce.

I cannot remember my guilt, my personal plague is one of indifference: my house is built of ill dreams, a desire to do harm, the sick art of the act. The struggle is a thing I scrape free: random cloaks or shadows across my lips that keep what I say as the oath I have sworn. What I would have said terrifies the masses. What I would have said threatens with the large hand, with planets askew, with what I knew was wrong from the moment I thought it.

Doctor, there are too many nests for me. To list. To sit and see. To frequent. To invent. I count them out, sticks and rakes, ribs and rags, a fathom I can wreck. To sense. To taste. These are the prophecies where the whisperings can live. I sift them and wait. I shake them and end. I am the land. By the flesh of the world, I crush and flee. I seize and cry. I am the mind of me. I singe and crave. The nothing of me crude. I am soothed from it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learn more about Militello and her work from her website, and read more by purchasing Body Thesaurus. At the time of posting, Body Thesaurus is available in the UK at Foyle's for 35% off, so take advantage while it's on!

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis" by Jennifer Militello

ANTIDOTE WITH ATTEMPTS AT DIAGNOSIS

They did the test of the body placed beside a flint-skinned nurse, the test for epidemics formed of mirrors, the test of the lethal pills hidden in the eyeglasses.

They did the flow of sodium ions into nerve cells, they did filth in each of the orifices, they did a gem, a pollen shape, they did a transfusion to the vein.

They kept evolving unpredictable results, found a vertigo of snakes and called it the mind, found time and called us its puppets.

They began to sense eternity and accumulate remorse.

They filmed the corrosion each touch would cause, test for hemorrhaging, test for poison, test for the memory of adolescent faith.

They found the secret room where all the genomes drape. They closed a hand’s palm made of images over all nomadic sleep.

They found a landscape in the eye, doing its quiet singing.

They mixed situations to administer with the full complexity of weather, mixed the plumage of unmade bones with their gutterless fray, with a thaw as raw as speech, to help them fracture like timbers or a dove’s cluttered voice.

They proceeded with medications, experimental embalming, anorexic restoration, therapeutic disturb. 

They admitted an inability.

They lost count of the dying. They fished infants from the creek.

They slept in proximity of the mouths of others to be somewhat like breath.

Jennifer Militello

This poem first appeared in Indiana Review and is forthcoming in Militello's second collection, Body Thesaurus, with Tupelo Press. 

Learn more about Militello's work by visiting her website, and/or purchase Flinch of Song, her first collection, from Amazon in the UK (I couldn't find it at any of the independents I tried) or Powell's in the US.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "The Objectless Place, an Ether Twist" by Jennifer Militello

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.

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Identity Narrative" by Jennifer Militello

Identity Narrative

Do not eat from October’s black hand, O my situation.

Are you still.  Listen.  Innocence: a seam to be stitched or split with a throw of omens.  I lay me down, my soul to keep.  I have sown my amen in the earth.

Sometimes, I live in the open.  My heartbeat a lamb, my heartbeat I am bleeding from the mouth a heartbroken rain.  The thin inches time will give me winter as I stand and watch.  The small in me has anthems made of time’s mouth made of thousands of beads.

I will read my more childish self to sleep.  She will use locusts only for as long as they robe the fields with the feeding they were meant for.  She will nest where bats nest, set curtains to burning, place a marker beside my name so that I might return.

Her heart, made of shale, lies in the mouth of a pious man.  Its verses are stalls that keep the wind ceaseless.  Its lamps cry light in the shape of young lovers as they two-step through the four rooms of God.

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, her first collection, from Amazon in the UK (I couldn't find it at any of the independents I tried) or Powell's in the US.