“Perfectly Whatever” by Charlotte PencePosted by Rattle
Charlotte Pence
PERFECTLY WHATEVER
Only in 1998 did astronomers discover that we had been missing nearly three-quarters of the contents of the universe, the so-called dark energy—an unknown form of energy that surrounds each of us, tugging at us ever so slightly.
—from “The Universe’s Invisible Hand” by Christopher J. Conselice
Now that you’re finally sexed-up, you notice
how sexed-down your friends are. One leaves
post-it notes on your office chair ordering
you to stop shaving your pubic hair. Another
with fourth-stage breast cancer tells you once
this is done, she never wants to be touched again.
Another admits whenever she has sex
with her husband, she cries, his body “perfectly
whatever.” What can you say? These conversations
gnaw at the moments in-between your next
great fuck. How can you concentrate on their currs?
Oh, but you did at one point. It’s as if you’ve woken
to a new universe in need of different equations
since the discovery of this so-called dark energy.
You can no longer read Milton, so you masturbate
instead. You see a therapist about these desires,
and she, a virgin, a Baptist, a good-girl, says, “Enjoy.
Enjoy. You’ll one day be an old lady on a bike
with plastic flowers, so do it now.” And you want
to know about this bike, these flowers,
that old woman, but you cannot concentrate.
Now that your desires are certified sane, you go
full force into this one man you’ve wanted.
Fucking in the hall, against the wall, on the carpet
spotted with NASA-neon stains that are you,
your fluids changed from drugs you take for constant
UTIs. You suspect friends disapprove of this new you.
And you can’t blame them. You know the messiness
of calculating new variables and constants. Still, you,
a vegetarian, gorge on KFC. You and this dude
fuck and eat and fuck and sleep and fuck, and
you pick up Milton’s Paradise Lost, yet again,
and look for connections. Is this world beginning
or ending? Does dark energy signify anything dark?
“World expanding,” is what you read in Scientific American.
Dark energy, the creator of us. Maybe the destroyer
that will pluck the sun like a football from our solar system,
separate atoms from atoms. Who knows? Who
cares? What is known is Nothing is now Something,
and you read the name for it: the Cosmological Constant—
and you confuse that with the air from your couch
to the wall, the air he pushes you through
to reel you back in, the air through which Satan
and the warring gods fell from one world to the next.
Charlotte Pence: “I’ve been increasingly interested in extending the circle of subjects that we bring to poetry. Science articles, which are often full of little poetic gems like ‘human flesh smells brown,’ have been my source of inspiration for the last few years. This poem lassos together a woman’s sexual peak and dark energy’s discovery, which is a combination I hope adds complexity and tension to both subjects.” (website)
Andrew Nurkin: “Though I like going to poetry readings as much as anyone, occasionally my mind wanders. But the thing I love most about poetry, and poetry readings, is the dialogue a poem can open up between different points in time. The best poems I know are ones that knock me out of my lemming linearity into the free-form expanse of memory and experience.” (web)
“To A Husband, Saved By Death At 48” by MPosted by Rattle
M
TO A HUSBAND, SAVED BY DEATH AT 48
You will not see me, now
older than you are.
You will not watch my toenails
harden into turtle shells.
You will not complain about my face
creams costing more than most people
spend on groceries in a month.
Nor see me apply them to my hands
because no matter how young a woman’s face looks,
it’s always the back of her hands
that give her away.
You will never think of me as a suitable gift
for a toddler on Christmas,
shrunken to doll size, wrapped in skin
as thin as bargain paper. You will not be the one
to drive me home wet
from the Lloyd Center Mall
where restrooms are hidden away like exclusive resorts
down remote corridors.
You will not need to remind me
to take my umbrella when it’s raining,
nor find my car keys
in the refrigerator next to the eggs I bought yesterday
and we will not laugh about it.
You will not hear me struggling with nouns.
You will never be awakened late on Friday evening
by a ringing phone, wife gone from your bed,
Detective Copeland saying she was found asking people
to help her find her husband
at a Taco Bell on Burnside
that stays open from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.
every day but Sunday.
Someone else will sit with me in the ER on New Year’s Eve
listening to an alcohol poisoned teenage boy
vomit in the next room while we wait for news
about the golf ball on my temple, received for nothing more complicated
than slipping off a curb.
You will not see me without my teeth
or my gallbladder.
Never need to learn I’ve been sexually inappropriate with Paul
in The Pearl Memory Care Residence at Kruse Way
where I live apart from you for the first time in fifty years.
You will not be the one to close my eyes.
Kim Dower: “It’s important to note that my poem, ‘Why People Really Have Dogs,’ lists only one of the reasons why people really have dogs. There are many other reasons. To find out what they are, watch your dog while she sleeps and you will know.” (web)
Tony Barnstone: “‘Why I’m Not a Carpenter’ was a poem I wrote inspired by a dinner I had with Yusef Komunyakaa, who is editing an anthology of carpenter poems. At that dinner, I promised Yusef a poem, and so wrote this one to order. My brother Rob is a former carpenter who is now an architect and professor, and I spent many of the summers of my youth working with Rob renovating houses in Greece and Boston, in Vermont and Indiana. In our unusual crew, the working class grunt sinking post holes or wiping his sawdust-covered brow was most likely a Harvard architecture student, a brilliant painter, or, in my case, a graduate student at Berkeley writing his dissertation on William Carlos Williams, and I strongly felt the way these different kinds of craft still carried gender biases and constructions of masculinity and femininity. I decided to reference my insufficient skills as a carpenter and as a poet in part by alluding to the title of Frank O’Hara’s wonderful poem ‘Why I’m Not a Painter,’ in which he shows the parallel and yet divergent skill sets and mind sets that go into painting versus poetry. Another element in the poem, the story about Achilles killing the Amazon queen, comes not from The Iliad, but from the 4th century epic poem by Quintus of Smyma that I happened to be reading. Quintus’s epic, titled Posthomerica, is a Trojan War poem that creates some new Homeric stories and puts a new spin on the familiar ones. The final element that I blended in was a failed draft of a poem that I had tried to write while working on a crew in Boston in 1988 or so. I am particularly happy that that failed draft, one that I worked on for years without success, has finally been crafted into the poem that I like. Thank you, Yusef!” (web)
Pia Aliperti: “Reading poetry makes me want to be wild and turn others wild with me. How can you read something like Gregory Orr’s ‘Love Poem’ or Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony and God and resist the urge to answer? I write because the goose-bumped, prickly pleasure I get from reading demands more strange music.” (website)
“What My Parents Want” by Devika BrandtPosted by Rattle
Devika Brandt
WHAT MY PARENTS WANT
At 86 Dad wants a new silver Mercury with heated seats.
Mom wants whatever Dad wants. We’re on the phone,
and I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor with my headset
on, scratching at the black sap marks that stick and
spread before finally letting go. We’re all tired of talking.
So I don’t ask them about moving closer to their kids;
I don’t mention the nurse they fired; I don’t say I think
they’re making a mistake. I breathe hard and tackle
a tough wad of sap. They tell me how cold it is in Las Vegas
in the winter; how the mountains turn purple in their rise
toward the sky. I don’t ask them if they’re eating. I keep
myself from mentioning their many medications. They
want me to love them; they want me to leave them alone.
They want to fumble along the walls of their stucco
house until one falls down, cheek to the cool tile
of the floor, bones so heavy, joints stiff, life blood
thick and unwilling. I hope the other one will lie down too,
pull an afghan over them, the one with squares her mother
made. I hope in the accumulating heat of the desert
they will gasp into each other’s arms and give themselves
away. I hope they can do it without breaking. I hope
they can do it in the clean sweet heat of the day, an open
mouthed entry, the last ripe fruits of breath released.