field over heart means remember
why yes i am procrastinating, shut up.
what to say when they ask you why you write poetry III
February 2011
Hold everything you touch. -- "Shutter Dove", by Carrie Rudzinski
It was February and I braved the weather,
the roads frozen over with December's rain,
to listen to two women poets read their work.
To the person who has never written anything
meant to be read aloud,
to the girl who used to be terrified to admit
that she wrote at all,
the brute force of their voices struck me--
the way they shouted, one hand outstretched,
staring, shameless as factory smoke in winter,
heavy with cold, each word slow and full.
Doubtless to them, mine is a special kind of muteness.
I can't say I've ever spoken,
since I've never spoken.
Sitting there, on the other side of the microphone,
I wanted to ask them,
when will the written word be enough?
When will it sound as sweet or as open
as the casual hailing of a friend on a snowy street?
It can never cut as deep, they seemed to say.
It can never be sharp enough to summon,
as we do, the memory of a tire swing,
or the taste of Boston at night.
A poem written and not spoken is always
a prayer for understanding.
The poet who communicates behind a screen
of black and white will always
be less than adequate.
I who am silent, who only show
my pen side to my readers, am always
asking, "When will I be enough?"
The poet who faces her audience is always
saying, "Take me, for now, I am enough."
This is what the bearded old men
who wrote the Bible meant when they said,
"In the Beginning was the Word."
That word belonged to someone
before it was spoken, set free.
I have set nothing free.
Nothing has belonged to me.
I was told that every poem is the same:
Love me, love me, love me.
Love me for my inadequacies.
Love me for being self-contained.
Love me for needing you to complete this prayer.
Love me for never needing you at all.
So, reader, unseeing and unspeaking as we both are,
let us be honest. Let us try
for understanding, in the absence of understanding.
There is no pretense here.
I lay myself bare.
Love me, love me, love me.
Surely such feeling existed before words,
and surely, it exists now,
without.
What You Regret When Walking to the Station Alone, Knowing You Should Have Invited Him Out for a Drink After Having Dinner With Him, His Best Friend, and His Best Friend's Girlfriend
March 2011
That you strode away so calmly, as if hesitation were a foreign country and one you were uninterested in ever visiting, least of all with him.
That you could not help but review your performance tonight, and you sounded so stilted to yourself, laughing with only perfunctory emotion, letting his best friend dominate the conversation, nodding in genial agreement with the girlfriend at jokes meant to appeal to you, the only other girl at the table.
That you only held one side conversation with him, and that about something pedestrian, the kind of conversation one had with an aunt, or a high school teacher one had not seen for many years, while mulling over which entree to take at the family barbecue, the hot dog or the hamburger.
That you did not bother to ask him more questions-- where in Alabama? How long? Oh, your father, what kind of law? With which other friends on that boat? When? Which lake? And often? That you knew such answers would only lead to his best friend courteously over-explaining, and him contemplating his fork over the mostaccioli, and you out of your depth, like it's 10 minutes left on the clock, and you're third and long.
That you felt no qualms hugging his friend goodbye--after all, this was the third time you had met him, and the second time he had bought you a drink while you both hid from his ex-- but did not think to do the same to him.
That you did not turn around to see who followed you into the turnstile, that you write yourself off as too unexceptional for grand romantic gestures, it could not be him, you said, and it wasn't.
That now, on the L, on the bus, every comment of his you playback sounds like an invitation: This is the bar I like. My house is this way anyway. No, it's okay, I'll walk with you. Don't worry about dinner. We should do this again sometime.
That 22 years later, you still remain unsure of the intentions of a stranger, that another person's emotions remain as foreign as Catholic rites in their original translations, or the workings of the futures trade, or epistemology, or the relevance of rho. That you could write whole essays, on Japanese pottery when moistened by the rain, on the taste of oolong tea on the tongue, on Calabresi and Melamed, on the rise of the Fifth Generation, and still you could not say: what did he mean when he asked you, Have you waited long?
That you and you alone were responsible for the first step in the opposite direction, the second step, the fifteenth, the thirty eighth, that actually you didn't count the steps, that you were the pistons of your own legs, the steering wheel of your own torso, that no one forced you to go and no one asked you to stay.
That you got home and sat in the dark of your apartment, drinking nothing, doing nothing, being alone, being wholly you. That you knew in truth such loneliness is better than a desperate grasp at companionship, that if you had asked, it would be a steady decline into false intimacy, pretend affection, the momentary warmth of two passengers who have both missed their flight, or a match lit for a smoke break taken in the Chicago winter.
That even so, even knowing all that, you could not help regret, could not help but wish you had not taken that bus, that subway, those thirty eight steps.
That such is the nature of loneliness, that even the righteousness of your solitude cannot satisfy you, that in the end, it is in you to want, and want, and want.
In Childhood
By Kimiko Hahn
things don't die or remain damaged
but return: stumps grow back hands,
a head reconnects to a neck,
a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic.
Later this vision is not True:
the grandmother remains dead
not hibernating in a wolf's belly.
Or the blue parakeet does not return
from the little grave in the fern garden
though one may wake in the morning
thinking mother's call is the bird.
Or maybe the bird is with grandmother
inside light. Or grandmother was the bird
and is now the dog
gnawing on the chair leg.
Where do the gone things go
when the child is old enough
to walk herself to school,
her playmates already
pumping so high the swing hiccups?
When You Leave
By Kimiko Hahn
This sadness could only be a color
if we call it ‘momoiro,’ Japanese
for peach-color, as in the first story
Mother told us: It is the color of the hero’s skin
when a barren woman discovered him
inside a peach floating down the river.
And of the banner and gloves she sewed
when he left her to battle the horsemen, then found himself
torn, like fruit off a tree. Even when he met a monkey,
dog, and bird he could not release
the color he saw when he closed his eyes. In his boat
the lap of the waves against the hold
was too intimate as he leaned back to sleep. He wanted
to leave all thoughts of peach behind him -
The fruit that brought him to her
and she, the one who opened the color forever.
what to say when they ask you why you write poetry III
February 2011
Hold everything you touch. -- "Shutter Dove", by Carrie Rudzinski
It was February and I braved the weather,
the roads frozen over with December's rain,
to listen to two women poets read their work.
To the person who has never written anything
meant to be read aloud,
to the girl who used to be terrified to admit
that she wrote at all,
the brute force of their voices struck me--
the way they shouted, one hand outstretched,
staring, shameless as factory smoke in winter,
heavy with cold, each word slow and full.
Doubtless to them, mine is a special kind of muteness.
I can't say I've ever spoken,
since I've never spoken.
Sitting there, on the other side of the microphone,
I wanted to ask them,
when will the written word be enough?
When will it sound as sweet or as open
as the casual hailing of a friend on a snowy street?
It can never cut as deep, they seemed to say.
It can never be sharp enough to summon,
as we do, the memory of a tire swing,
or the taste of Boston at night.
A poem written and not spoken is always
a prayer for understanding.
The poet who communicates behind a screen
of black and white will always
be less than adequate.
I who am silent, who only show
my pen side to my readers, am always
asking, "When will I be enough?"
The poet who faces her audience is always
saying, "Take me, for now, I am enough."
This is what the bearded old men
who wrote the Bible meant when they said,
"In the Beginning was the Word."
That word belonged to someone
before it was spoken, set free.
I have set nothing free.
Nothing has belonged to me.
I was told that every poem is the same:
Love me, love me, love me.
Love me for my inadequacies.
Love me for being self-contained.
Love me for needing you to complete this prayer.
Love me for never needing you at all.
So, reader, unseeing and unspeaking as we both are,
let us be honest. Let us try
for understanding, in the absence of understanding.
There is no pretense here.
I lay myself bare.
Love me, love me, love me.
Surely such feeling existed before words,
and surely, it exists now,
without.
What You Regret When Walking to the Station Alone, Knowing You Should Have Invited Him Out for a Drink After Having Dinner With Him, His Best Friend, and His Best Friend's Girlfriend
March 2011
That you strode away so calmly, as if hesitation were a foreign country and one you were uninterested in ever visiting, least of all with him.
That you could not help but review your performance tonight, and you sounded so stilted to yourself, laughing with only perfunctory emotion, letting his best friend dominate the conversation, nodding in genial agreement with the girlfriend at jokes meant to appeal to you, the only other girl at the table.
That you only held one side conversation with him, and that about something pedestrian, the kind of conversation one had with an aunt, or a high school teacher one had not seen for many years, while mulling over which entree to take at the family barbecue, the hot dog or the hamburger.
That you did not bother to ask him more questions-- where in Alabama? How long? Oh, your father, what kind of law? With which other friends on that boat? When? Which lake? And often? That you knew such answers would only lead to his best friend courteously over-explaining, and him contemplating his fork over the mostaccioli, and you out of your depth, like it's 10 minutes left on the clock, and you're third and long.
That you felt no qualms hugging his friend goodbye--after all, this was the third time you had met him, and the second time he had bought you a drink while you both hid from his ex-- but did not think to do the same to him.
That you did not turn around to see who followed you into the turnstile, that you write yourself off as too unexceptional for grand romantic gestures, it could not be him, you said, and it wasn't.
That now, on the L, on the bus, every comment of his you playback sounds like an invitation: This is the bar I like. My house is this way anyway. No, it's okay, I'll walk with you. Don't worry about dinner. We should do this again sometime.
That 22 years later, you still remain unsure of the intentions of a stranger, that another person's emotions remain as foreign as Catholic rites in their original translations, or the workings of the futures trade, or epistemology, or the relevance of rho. That you could write whole essays, on Japanese pottery when moistened by the rain, on the taste of oolong tea on the tongue, on Calabresi and Melamed, on the rise of the Fifth Generation, and still you could not say: what did he mean when he asked you, Have you waited long?
That you and you alone were responsible for the first step in the opposite direction, the second step, the fifteenth, the thirty eighth, that actually you didn't count the steps, that you were the pistons of your own legs, the steering wheel of your own torso, that no one forced you to go and no one asked you to stay.
That you got home and sat in the dark of your apartment, drinking nothing, doing nothing, being alone, being wholly you. That you knew in truth such loneliness is better than a desperate grasp at companionship, that if you had asked, it would be a steady decline into false intimacy, pretend affection, the momentary warmth of two passengers who have both missed their flight, or a match lit for a smoke break taken in the Chicago winter.
That even so, even knowing all that, you could not help regret, could not help but wish you had not taken that bus, that subway, those thirty eight steps.
That such is the nature of loneliness, that even the righteousness of your solitude cannot satisfy you, that in the end, it is in you to want, and want, and want.
In Childhood
By Kimiko Hahn
things don't die or remain damaged
but return: stumps grow back hands,
a head reconnects to a neck,
a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic.
Later this vision is not True:
the grandmother remains dead
not hibernating in a wolf's belly.
Or the blue parakeet does not return
from the little grave in the fern garden
though one may wake in the morning
thinking mother's call is the bird.
Or maybe the bird is with grandmother
inside light. Or grandmother was the bird
and is now the dog
gnawing on the chair leg.
Where do the gone things go
when the child is old enough
to walk herself to school,
her playmates already
pumping so high the swing hiccups?
When You Leave
By Kimiko Hahn
This sadness could only be a color
if we call it ‘momoiro,’ Japanese
for peach-color, as in the first story
Mother told us: It is the color of the hero’s skin
when a barren woman discovered him
inside a peach floating down the river.
And of the banner and gloves she sewed
when he left her to battle the horsemen, then found himself
torn, like fruit off a tree. Even when he met a monkey,
dog, and bird he could not release
the color he saw when he closed his eyes. In his boat
the lap of the waves against the hold
was too intimate as he leaned back to sleep. He wanted
to leave all thoughts of peach behind him -
The fruit that brought him to her
and she, the one who opened the color forever.