In My Parents' Kitchen: A Free Write

The kitchen ticks. This would be true if there weren't a clock; parents' kitchens simply tick. Hotter here than last time, and there is heavily leafed water, rather than ice, collecting itself on the pool cover. There is no one here. When there is no one here in your apartment, it means you are free to sing out loud, wear nothing, say nothing, tinker. In your parents' house, when no one is here, you are free to stare out the back window, contemplate what Home is, watch the wooden dragonfly wobble on the porch.

It is as it is when the whole house sleeps and you--only you--are awake. You do and do not wish to be the only one awake, and you feel the world's mouth open wide, as if to swallow you. Unless you pray.

There are house plants. There are pets. There are new appliances, sugar cereal, one or two things you don't recognize. In your absence, rejection letters came in pairs. (And here, it is important to distinguish homophones: pairs, not pears.) They threaten to choke you, but you see that the kitchen clock ticks. So you resonate your vocal chords, as you would if there were someone to speak to. Your name first: . There is your voice. You decide it should still be heard.

At a reading, there was this line:

Chimes in a darkened house.

As long as there is a line you remember, you will write lines others will remember. Remember this, like you remember:

Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me

'til I come marchin' home

and

Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree...

Do you still want me?

Songs sung last time you were in this kitchen, when ice hung about the deck, drapes on a stage. Somehow your heart got lighter, fingers laced beneath it. Somehow a straighter spine, as if the little sparrows that drink the heavily leafed water pooling on the pool flocked to your back, got in and knotted themselves like musical notes along its length.

Eros and Anteros

When given the words:

anteros

crippled
whirligig
spindle
staircase
threshold.

........

There were Callas's arias

in their mother's crinkled bedclothes,

ione trapped in her cedar chest sachets.

They had whirligigs out

in the yard, spinning

pinwheels and wobbling ducks.

Anteros watched them once

for an hour after that accidental

gulp of his father's anis. He caught them--

twice--winking at him.

Meanwhile, Eros burned hair

in the upstairs bathroom.

They had inside games

others envied. One

was called "Threshold."

Some hot, wet-blanketed

afternoons, drooped on the staircase,

one brother would softly say

threshold and the other'd

understand. They'd play:

Eros at his mother's spindle,

balancing her records. Blindfolded

Anteros guessing the tunes

with his tongue, which had kissed

every neighborhood girl.

When Eros was crippled

one Winter, they stayed in, wore

their mother's negligées.

And Anteros told his brother

of these girls, their little mouths

like rain-dampened sugar, like

river moss. Their little

waists in his hands

like warm, combed lambs.

Rilke, Kaminsky, Millay

"Who, if I cried out, might hear me-among the ranked Angels?
Even if One suddenly clasped me to his heart
I would die of the force of his being. For Beauty is only
the infant of scarcely endurable Terror, and we
are amazed when it casually spares us.
Every Angel is terrible.
And so I check myself, choke back my summoning
black cry. Who'll help us then? Not Angels,
not Mankind; and the nosing beasts soon scent
how insecurely we're housed in this signposted World.
And yet a tree might grow for us upon some hill
for us to see and see again each day. Perhaps
we have yesterday's streets. Perhaps we keep
the pampered loyalty of some old habit
which loved its life with us - and stayed, never left us."
...........
How strange...no longer to live upon Earth!"

--Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Die erste Elegie," THE DUINO ELEGIES


"The back of her knee: a blessed territory, I keep /
my wishes there.
...
But Natalia, beside me, turns the pages,
what happened and did not happen
must speak and sing by turns.
...
On the night I met her, the Rabbi sang and sighed,
god's lips on his brow, Torah in his arms.
- I unfastened her stockings, worried

that I have stopped worrying.
She slept in my bed--I slept on a chair,
she slept on a chair--I slept in the kitchen,

she left her slippers in y shower, in my Torah,
her slippers in each sentence I spoke.
...
Someone else is on this page, writing. I attempt /
to move my fingers faster than she.
...
And each night, looking up, we saw ourselves:
a man and a woman, whispering Lord,
one word the soul destroys to make clear."

--Ilya Kaminsky, from "Natalia," DANCING IN ODESSA


"To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beautyis not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
...
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."

--Edna St. Vincent Millay, from "Spring," SECOND APRIL

"Older." This one is a baby, mere hours old.

Older

“silentia muta noctis – deep speechlessness of night”

—Anne Carson, “Nox”

Photo by Nicolette Van Doorn

I sometimes think I am older

than anyone. Older than

my mother, even now

disguising her grey

over the kitchen sink.

Older than Millay, who

around this time years ago

interrogated returning Spring.

I have no words

for the dunes. Theirs is a history

of collected animals long gone,

crushed to sand by

marching years.

Deepest cloud shadows pass.

If there is

anything older than clouds,

let it speak.

I hear thunder. Then

I remember

something older

than mothers.

Older than sand, salt. Than

calm above clouds or ground water

below: the spirit of what is loved.

Thread so fine. Less

than spider’s silk, knotted

at each worldly thing, tying it

secretly to Earth. Each time

I pass

beach grass

foot path

lost ring

face-up mirror

abandoned couch

I feel a tug.

In the deep speechlessness of night

it was once thought

the brain rested. We now know

it travels. Speaks in our place

In imaginary fields

At imaginary podiums.

It says Remember

while our mouths remain still.

It tugs at the thread,

the day’s face-up mirrors.

I wake with the strangest feeling.

as though, having been somewhere,

I harvested someone else’s life,

was harvested myself.

Was older, even, than

the scythe doing the work.

Ay, a longe tyme yt has beene.

Oh, four followers, here is something I read yesterday which (imagine it if you can) soothes as it delivers a pistol shot:

"The artist seeks out the luminous detail and presents it. He does not comment."

-Ezra Pound

The artist also goes for months without writing. And then writes. And then goes for weeks without writing. And then writes. And then only days. And this is my goal: for those days without writing to seem as long as those arid months.

I have unearthed a red notebook from Oscar the papermaker, and have found this:

Faith, a twig, a string of dental floss,

a soap sud.

“When the work of interpretation has been completed the dream can be recognized as wish fulfillment.”

—Sigmund Freud

1. You are on a hill.

I don’t know if

the weather is fine because

it’s your dream. Barbed

wire surrounds you. I’d like

for there to be cool wind

that makes you halfwake

and slide your hand into the elastic

of my underwear. It’s not

a sexual gesture. You are looking

for solid ground, Sanctuary.

2. You are against the wall.

I don’t what part

of the wall is you, what part wall.

Green vines creep up. There is

no wind. Nothing to link to

the howling in my chest.

A tic—I see you—brick

and blood. You do not reach

out. My name is on the ground.

3. This one is rabbits.

This one is skin without safety,

grass without pigment, juice

from an unknown fruit. If you

can trust it, it might kill you,

so you trust it and it does and

you wake up.

Written July 16, 2009.

Today you could call for me

and I would not hear you over

tidal roar or hooves gaining

early morning ground. Oh

insistent speed that said,

It’s Time, and I released you.

When unwelcome gusts

brought unwelcome ghosts,

the fabric of nightfall could not hold.

Tension mounted its broad, tight

horse outside the gate, where

dogs had given up.

You could have called for me

that night among clanging stars

and crashing iron. I’d have heard

you. Why did you not call?

I waited. Sundown. Sunrise.

Roosters forgot the hour. The chicks

they begat ticked across the road

like tiny, neglected bombs. I didn’t start

after them, but let them

go in waves.