CALENDAR
G e ny a Tu ro vskaya
JANUARY
the moon is no proof that the moon seen through a telescope is perfect language there must be something quieter
an egg
hatching a metropolis under an anesthesia of snow the rhyme at the intersection of no and no
:::
the act opens to the thaw everything is still the same the same snow the same tooth marks the continent enters the witness relocation program takes an alias hires a plastic surgeon I can still recognize it by its tubercular cough the same story: we are here but we weren’t always in the interim we move across the desert with our libraries strapped to our backs valuables hidden in our underwear the doctor says that it isn’t serious when I was a girl I pulled my hair out
my parents unlearned how to read they were no help to me deciphering instructions to board games this is why I don’t know how why I have a second face keeping vigil at the back of my head
FEBRUARY
that would be one way
to reenter
through the space between ribs these were the lines drawn in the sand invisible wires stretched across visible trees the landscape held in place there is a moon there sometimes there are dogs a dog barks answers
another dog
mid-flight the black box records sound traveling through water a camera slows motion through winter in the window I saw them weep out of the shallows on weak knees at low tide in coats they waded through ankles weeds why it happened the way that it did the letters always came late the border guard sleeps in his dog’s embrace the dog sleeps with his clothes on he asks me how I get from here to there I answer magic carpet seven league boots
MARCH
a child recites the histories of Herodotus and is rewarded with a gold star this is the division of the world a hair’s breadth between safety and the deepest water ::: the postcard from the horse latitudes said: horses overboard still no motion weather is lovely wishing nothing here the world divides blind the wind gropes around corners everything is born in the wrong order the shadow of the wounded man staggers ahead of him shadow hands fill with shadow blood
:::
everywhere the singing of swans only just now before the snow heat half the world’s foreheads rubbed with ash
something must be sacrificed something loved above all else
:::
there was nothing for me there what I love best is the face in the Wanted Poster the taste of my own tongue inside my mouth and all the drowned horses suspended mid gallop in the Atlantic manes swaying to and fro like seaweed
APRIL
there is a word on the glass surface submerged beneath it a message in the mirror’s Braille the blind man with bandaged hands asks me to read to him begging the difference between dawn and twilight between all things that do not possess a body picture this I say picture this the sky opening and closing he knows how the sky feels it is an extinct creature the sky he says is a doorway without a door like music it travels a staircase that is only one version of the story in the other there is no wind and I am surrounded by water who will be waiting for me when I disembark when the ship is folded away neat as a white handkerchief how do I determine distance in a dead language how do I ask to be let in
MAY
but I looked for you under horse I looked for you under gramophone under knife
in the dictionary
JUNE
a woman opens her blouse to reveal a city a blouse opens to reveal a woman against the sea the exposed breast is the harpoon’s white accuracy the compass needle points toward the sky we could move forward and back this equilibrium of scales musical notation of the siren’s song ::: in the laboratory gloved hands pour and stir something grows through the white milk diagram of a mine field a man’s loneliness the envelope is a rumor ::: burying a boat my shovel hits the water table now we can sail our armada underneath the ground
:::
beyond the sand dunes the overlap of breath through sleep speech the suspension of disbelief
:::
and then someone sends word for you to come you begin folding your paper boat
JULY
the atmosphere emerged out of a pocket of air the temperature of versts receding into the steppe snowed over on a snowless night the lines of telephone wires collapsing like a lung no light in the room save the pink window the page of the calendar lifting at the corner in the white fields of the open province it wasn’t a road the noiseless thaw no figures trudging through the aftermath squinting into the wind breaking the ice from their beards and it was not an act of love the man naked at the window his back to the room breathing on his hands
AUGUST
the wrecked boat surfaced the boat people with their cargo of lemons were never found the newspaper said that "the sea took them" that isn’t how it happened
:::
a grown man found himself an orphan they are making a bed for him in the foundling hospital help me understand this when the lights go off all at once is something meant to happen does someone step out of the mystery of those animal sounds carrying a suitcase full of opposable thumbs gypsy dances
:::
the sea gives up its dead an engine combusts in the upper atmosphere shipbuilder collides with shipwreck no one behind us we swam singing through the turbulence exceeding the potential of the human voice what we unwound to return to the simple truth the lungs exhaling a house
or is it nothing but the wind to feel the thread the heart beat so strange a noise
SEPTEMBER
and there is something else that you must know it rained without end and hands trembled graphite a dark profile the red eye of the camera caught everything under the breath inside the inner ear the stethoscope detected only static it was a bruise or a birthmark that deepening of color a black umbrella blooming inside a word the bridge of the mouth draws open the tug boats pass all you need to do is break ranks surface above ground a blind mole the sky opens its borders
a fugitive
birds migrate inside a room the weather multiplies gravity x desire breath clouds the mirror
OCTOBER
things break it was inevitable the suspension in air aged us
:::
a letter: it was snowing we couldn’t feel our arms or our legs but our backs were wet with sweat finally a city burned and we warmed our hands on it
:::
the body hurtles through the space where the elevator should have been weather falling through the space where the body should have been the broken thing mends itself
:::
you say that it begins and ends in the wrong place count what is lost contain what is loose in the dream we move through gauze our enormous ears glow pink filtering light there is a white dress with a red collar the dress is child sized it hovers on a string above steeples
:::
letters at night an eye chart in another alphabet a test of vision two mirrors face each other to speak also above music the atmosphere churns ::: having run out of men they have begun beheading statues a train travels northward along the dialect continuum the last word that walks the tightrope over history pirouettes to find a toehold the moment that it hits through the ice the onion skin the point of the bayonet directs traffic mute I point at what I want and grunt
NOVEMBER
there is rain and there is tin there are clouds and there are clouds dust is piecemeal trumpets blow and tuning forks tremble where they lie
:::
an archaeologist told me this keep an eye on the scene guard against theft the split seam reveals how the story ends as the story begins with the impossible chrome light
snow
a finger below the sternum pushing the voice up into the skull love sounds wet plaster pieta epiphany of an alarm
pigment pressed into
passion
the noise of a helicopter flattens the grass
:::
cello theremin the metronome
something drops and hits the floor scouts crawl on their bellies in there mouths a song the pins of a grenade make a necklace do you remember: are those are your birds in my branches?
:::
my life took such a turn
private life
private happiness you flip a switch and nothing happens pull the plug but the machines keep glowing in the dark and a telephone at the bottom of the drinking glass kept by the bedside it rings I don’t answer I answer no one rings the command passes from elbow to wrist
:::
what remains of the carnival cigar stubs we make sounds at one another cigarillos transfixed by the glow of the torch swallower’s luminous throat ::: the dream was delicate I kissed between his shoulder blades there was no need to beg the question it was a letter marked poste restante I was the girl the revised space form explained: as fountain the physics of water flowing upward the wheelchair that awaits the astronaut as he is lifted out of the cape
DECEMBER
how love is found at the bottom of a life behind the painted fan discern the unbeautiful face the still body sung out of air out of the mirror a stone cracked for its yolk the heart recalls its own perfect fracture the surface of a lake or what spilled over the rim of the drinking glass blind eye a thrown image the rotation of the body dancing despite itself in desire the liquid example of fountain lily pond the oxygenated word in the smithy of the throat fashioning murmur lullaby there is a town called Parting Ways remember me as you pass by
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Special thanks to Roman Turovsky.
This limited-edition book is part of the Eastern European Poets Series from Ugly Duckling Presse. It was designed and typeset in Hoefler Text with Arial MT Condensed Light titles by A. Moschovakis and M. Yankelevich along with the author. Cover letter-pressed by Orlando Printing using Caslon True Type, Goudy, and Line Plate Gothic.
/200
(c) Genya Turovskaya, 2002
For more information about the Eastern European Poets Series, please contact the editors at Ugly Duckling Presse, 112 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, or by email at ugly.duckling@pobox.com