Jorie Graham: Ten poems

United One

A curtain rose. I felt an obligation.

I tried to feel the thing that blossoms in me,

here in my seat, assigned,

the whole world intelligently lit

there up in front of me.

I tried to feel the untitled thing that blossoms in me.

The abnegation that doesn't stutter, not at all, not once.

Or no, that stutters once and once only.

What the days are a rehearsal for: breathe in, breathe out.

What the held breath is ventriloqual for,

the eyes quickly shut then scribbled

back open

again--rasping martyrdom-

the glance once again shouldering the broadcast out there, the loud

flat broadcast,

the glance ambushed once again by the apparent warmth of the

picture.

I blinked. Tomorrow came. Nothing came true.

Birds scattered and the minutes clucked, single-file.

Daggering, talkative, the breaths ministered to nothingness.

A tight bond, theirs. An hysterical love. Nevermind the things said-

those robberies. I love you, they said. Or in a broader sense

this example suggests ... I tried to feel the days go on without me.

Walking in the park, a small tin of shoe-polish

nestled in the grass. From over the trees

the names of people were called-out via loudspeaker.

Then there were numbers: the score, incessant coarse ribbon, floated by

elegantly,

then smeared itself all over the sky ...

The small hoe inside I'm supposed to love:

I tried to house it--no, I tried to gorge it.

I hovered round it with sentences to magnify the drama.

I cloaked it with waiting. I whispered don 't be afraid

and petitioned it with rapture--the plumed thing--the cross-dressed

lingering--dramatic--all my thin secrets giddy,

all my whispers free-spending ... Tomorrow came.

Slowly it scattered. Then it came again--first fragile, eyes closed,

then, peeling away its cellophane, eyes striating open,

it did it again--and each time so easy; first blurring a bit, then,

nearing 5,

the sparrows ascribble, the magnet rising, tomorrow

starting to strip itself clean again of itself. But casually. Tirelessly.

And without innuendo, friend. Just oh so plucky.

Peeling the minutes off, the little white worms.

Growing whiter. Quavering-up to a strong fine whiteness.

High varnish. Yet noncommittal. Giving thanks--or so it

seemed. Then backing away. Unexpurgated. Sort of

disfigured.

Then, again, tomorrow came. Never a chorus, only the hero.

And tomorrow, and tomorrow.

One after another, up into the floodlights.

I tried to feel the story grow, name by name,

one at a time. My eyes grew heavy, I could feel my attention slipping.

I tried to shoulder the whole necklace of accidents.

I waited for them all to reappear at the end.

To take a bow. All at once. All together. That I might remember.

Spelled from the Shadows

Trying to whisper life came back, the light came back.

It harshed-up the edges of the window-shade, curling its rims,

the room still grainy, dimpling,

and shinglings of shadows, layerings.

But the borders of the latex shade, braced against morning, gleamed.

The programming on the otherside leaked-deftly, splashily-

the acidly magnanimous harvest of the outside through-

high-pitched, fringed or winged,

framing insistent plenitudes.

Oh not as if evening had found me.

Or even the winter rushing.

Get up, get up. You are to walk and talk again, and breathe, and move.

And breathe.

Any manner of want, any world will do--any tint of mind-

lift up the shade.

You are the underside, thinking.

With your humility, with your colloquial plague (honor, desire),

and formulas for grief and loss ..... and shadows of other things unrelenting.

Get up. You must believe--prompt--with a snap of the wrist-

and the shade slap up with its skillful and hardly querulous whir-

It held you, once, the other side,

in its gossipy arms,

it seemed to gaze with its taut wide-awakeness

straight into your furious machine,

it wasn't a shabby love--it held-

sentences poured from it in alleyways, sometimes in avenues,

the carpenters moved through them always needed,

joinings held,

cashiers added up the sum and it rose up from calculation

onto limpid sleek receipts--we paid--the eucalyptus shone-

the walkie-talkies heard each other clearly and the road got fixed.

It was a curious love, it didn't think.

Each-other seemed a kind of waiting.

I know how simple all this sounds, in the light of ,

the ignorant sleep--so green--we now must labor in ... And yes,

it is nice in here, in the blur,

in the year, and then the year, in the sleep where nothing's won,

or lost, the shade leaking its ancient storyline,

shadows of flags-or are they birds--flapping across it now and then,

or maybe banners where the strong go by,

or clouds, or shrivelings of place, late leaves just now torn free,

or calculations tossed by a profounder logic-green?--I couldn't

tell from here.

In the end must come merciless ignorance.

In the end must come time wasted utterly.

Across the shade now hands without arms--a picnic of bits--generations of

seeds--or are they wings--or instruments--a business deal, an alphabet?

What are we supposed to fear? Look, the frame of light before me

yawns, a glittery arctic acid yawn, effulgent, blazing,

slack, without fatigue,