“A DAMN MIRACLE CONSIDERING” AND THREE POEMS

Mathilde and Dan at Diner

An indignation:

A tall thin man, rather fanatical, far from dissolute— It was a contest in hyperbole and carried on for no other reason.

He said:

“I know the truth of my rottage,

me a meated spirit of gulped air,

And I have never denied life—

So, I ask now, supplicant, how could my bill be so high?

Show me your scale of heart and feather,

the Laws by which the number and sex of offspring are controlled,

And I’ll teach you the ethics of swindling, a recollection of a dream which has within it the rest of the novel, the metallic meat, the iron taste.”

Dining, she must talk now to a man who was ten immensities away—

the little emperor of the crossroads.

She was the heart, everyone knew and

For the space of a thought, she was lit up like a transfiguration:

“Try to blot out some of the unspeakable, go ahead, see what happens. Life is full of reminders, an augmentation easily discarded, like smoking again.”

She paused and said:

“I know me and what I’ve done:

Commitments were made,

Much was asked for

(all in a lover’s strange math)

that infamous order that would enthrone our maxim.

In French we call them ‘industrielles’,”

She leaned over the booth,

Smiling her cigarette smile at him:

“But knowing the truth about oneself is, unlike the lie, an unforgettable business.

I’ve ruined many a nice happy dinner party establishing the proximity of the sea,

Crossing the air with a jeweled hand, cleansing myself of my bomb fear—

I, too, was not wholly unified—

rigorously documenting the process of being…”

She trailed off, looking out onto the midway.

The hand grasps the hand in compatibility:

“The ways of love are variable indeed.”

A Damn Miracle, Considering

She settled herself disjointed in the seat across from me though this had all, of course, been consented to and several things had been signed when she came into the office a few days prior. That day, we’d discussed what to use—names, places, identifying details. As these things go, it was pretty muddled in the talks and clearer in the documents and just so it all became a fiction—as these things go. We agreed to talk about her kids—who I was curious about after last summer—and the house and the job. We talked about her, too.

Pulling unconsciously in performance the vertical lines under her chin, she said, “The stuff ages you, you know. Thirty eight’s not old, but even as a kid whenever it was hot I’d sit out and bake for hours. When I was a kid like that I could close my eyes next to I-95, which is, by the way, where I grew up, and I liked the sounds, like the ocean. I liked watching the cars and kept a log of the license plates, which I liked, too. They go fast, though.”

“It’s been nice at home recently, real nice. John’s been outta the picture for, God…eight months? And since then, the girls have really been a help. The house is clean. I’ve been noticing things for the first time…” I don’t ask questions as a matter of habit and protection, maybe a personal failing toward maintenance (the end these things usually tend toward), and I realized after just a few of these talks, that people say what they want to, and Mom always said you can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do, and I think that extends.

“I’ve been noticing how gold the sun comes in in the kitchen, which doesn’t make any sense because it’s blue outside—you know how it is up north. But in the summer, in the kitchen, the light comes in like honey and I think it’s mostly to do with the wallpaper, but I’ve started sitting in there more.

“And work’s good. They know John and the girls there, they know me, and they’ve never gotten mad when I screw up an order or drop something. I went to high school with the women in the kitchen, I know most of the customers, too, by now, anyways.

“It’s funny, I think about the whole thing collapsing into the river below it when it creaks downstairs and the thought’s bad. I like the place, propped up by those big old beams with a rotting stairway down to the riverrocks—something old and industrial left over from the mills. It’s a good place to be, and the light does the same thing in there except that the windows are old and warped, old glass, and leave patches like reflections of static water. I don’t like the standing much, but what’s there to do?” She smiled, resigned and far away, and after a while she told me about the kids.

“I haven’t been talking to my brother or his. I think they got a lot of bad from my dad and I don’t want them to come around anymore and smoke pot and swear. It’s not like my girls haven’t heard it, but I don’t like the noise. It’d be fine if it were constant or quiet, but the outbursts I can’t deal with. Amy from over here tells me it’s to do with John, but I’ve been like that since I was a kid. Dad used to clap his hands.”

“But the girls are really good, actually. I don’t know why, considering, but they’re good. Justine graduated high school last month, she’s over in St. Johnsbury with some friends and if she were Jess I’d be worried, but the girl has never touched a live wire. She doesn’t look around corners. And Jess is gonna be in her second year. She’s been spending a lot of time at home with me, actually, in the evenings, and sleeps here maybe five nights a week. I’ve always told them things that I thought would keep them from being like me, but they really don’t need telling. They were out for a while, but Justine even comes back, gets the gas and everything.”

“They’re good girls, they really are, which is a damn miracle, considering.”

The following two collections weave a texture from the strings of words that come from sudden thoughts, conversations, advertisements, and what I’ve read and forgotten – the words that stick to me. The unifying factor is the emotional resonance of the combinations and the mystery of that resonance.

Collection 4.3, Slow

This soft and weighted headdress is intended for social and emotional war—a portable fallout shelter for social exposure & continuing conversations—

Sometimes I open one door and one window or two doors and two windows. I do this only through shrewdness…Some strange sexual fantasy—

When asking if something is read or not we go to express,

Forward and to the left,

“There are only so many ways to represent data.”

After all, the name is not just draped over the thing

migrating and devouring its way through the pastures of media.

There are others...in dreams, battles, auto-didacticisms— an anticipatory reaching out—

It’s as though men had to make an effort to live properly with language, the place of language properly inhabited…

And I saw the devil once in an alleyway in Provincetown, He was beautiful.

He turned and faced me while walking, “No shit?”

“No shit.”

Collection 4.4, Fast

As I tortured a delicate blue-pink crawfish, I whispered to it, “It doesn’t matter, everything’s blue, join another order of being!”

I think I encouraged it to death—I told it there’s gold at the bottom of the cave, I made its claw hands into earrings that evening.

LUCY CARPENTER B’24 is overhearing conversations in a diner.