MISTAKE
Winner, 2011 Caketrain Chapbook Competition Rosmarie Waldrop, Final Judge
MISTAKE
a series of ritual actions, expiations, griefs, accidents, Orphics, overprints, sieving, sowing
MEREDITH STRICKER
Box 82588, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15218 www.caketrain.org caketrainjournal@hotmail.com Š 2012 Meredith Stricker. Cover image Š 2009 Leander Herzog. Used by permission. Printed on acid-free paper in Kearney, Nebraska, by Morris Publishing.
acknowledgments
earlier versions of series in this work have appeared in Zen Monster and elimae
contents
“the numerous little slips and mistakes which people make … have a meaning and can be interpreted” — Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life
the book is Heisenberg
11
mistake — an evolutionary
19
waste products
29
a burning thing
37
black / stone
45
orphics
53
there was a wilderness
65
notes
73
b
is it possible to know
screens alight with defiant txt messages
the pain someone else feels, that is so blank and wide it annihilates feeling? oh yeah, tongue oh yeah this
ink <embed script> <literate> a woman opens a<trans-> red box and places her jewelry carefully inside
a clasp and some rings
<unruly>
it’s impossible to <remove the awe>
a virus flowers quickly
as clouds wash
white-petaled from sprawl, even as radiant dictator
suburbs try to subdue us, stars still spin the surface of the moon
earth spins
spine spins on synovial axis
and loosened hair falls across her face
I’ll tell the dark, darkling
I’ll speak the ink, inkling
1/
THE BOOK IS HEISENBERG
“We must consider speech before it is spoken.” — Merleau-Ponty
ave
Avoidinynoone thousand enclodsed tthornbush oaa ave La t t t n H r ssoev er s f ted tos th a a rry e e e small h oi av os a e lua e te ble pl n yyy n yyy t
wash the book in milk before, after and during the mistake
15
stars are Being stars are being counted stars are Being barbed wire in stars stars are being counted black seed in stars barbed wire in stars itemized thoughts black seed in stars foreheads imprinted itemized thoughts I dreamed I was a book foreheads imprinted the book is Heisenberg I dreamed I was a book I open and close my hand the book is Heisenberg a bird flies to the sun I open and close my hand the book writes itself in me a bird flies to the sun never once remains the same the book writes itself in me acceleration of stars never once remains the same their noise burns acceleration of stars the inner ear their noise burns lie down the inner ear lie down lie down in listening lie down stars in listening stars
16
Sometimes a soul does not know it is a book when living, whose pages can never be completed in a final, perfect, finished sense, but are continually translating themselves just as leaves fall and translate the forest, chaparral, grassland in succession and no street adheres to its past self, just as leaves fall and leaves love us and traffic is humanity surging out of the boundaries of its skin
17
2/
MISTAKE
—
AN EVOLUTIONARY
TANGLED BANK
“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth…” — Darwin, last page of Origin of the Species
origin of continuous phylogenetic genospecific erroring of the species its adaptive improvisational helix of altered phoneme plans beeswarm
they spread you around like Orpheus shards of meat carried off still singing
21
wings freeway roar X6 family at a corner, a boy lugging a broken toilet X7 o things that happen
no past only continuous sharp as fire
It’s possible to think of Dante as a cave artist, like the hunters of Chauvet or Cueva de las Manos. The cave of his Commedia was also filled with elements and wonders, his circles remodeled the flat shadow-wall of 9
X
Plato’s thought-experiment cave into three-dimensional space with time
this is how angels live — folded into seams, tangled in brush
as the fourth. What was Dante hunting there? You could say – God, me, himself. You could also say justice, revenge, knowledge, freedom, eternity, 10
and love,Xyes especially love. But did he know which of these was also hunting him?
the Dove the Dove the Lantern
22
“Nothing stands still for us. This is our natural state and yet the state most contrary to our inclinations.” — Virginia Woolf
wool for owl aphasic side-effects of living in human weather musical cerebellum shifty loose slipped lobe euphoria could be another word wool particular, self-existing word-wart not alone, unlikely likeness, unlikelihood slapped, shaped
23
mistake the winch for wrench, wren mistake love for leave mistake plunder for pleasure and the green leaves shake the green leaves toil mistake oil for grail mistake offering for offal mistake carjacking for caretaking, cake the humming in his blue blue throat the prisoner for poisoner, pensioner perishing for cherishing mistake money for monet, doomsday grass green obscene mistake faith for faint, feint, fake the last green word on earth mistaken for rebirth mistake rapture for capture captive, capital, capsized
24
ferocity of darkness seeps through mended cloth caul o onto crowned birth-head mud pelt damp earth clotted mouthed, molded examine your conscience stain its animal if death is the stain we cannot live without folded into the heel of your hand
25
where grief drops me greasy-haired, openmouthed
stream in wide-open species skin contaminant question flecks all over spit word flux
26