Poetry
Four
[ T H I S W A S T O B E ]
This was to be a poem about leisure
About postures diversion & those of a person at work
From the couch I was watching Blow Up
A film, for me, principally about white jeans slashing green expanses of lawn
In one hand I had Krasdale Puffed Rice with Real Cocoa
An embarrassing purchase but to admit it
Does not make me vulnerable
I work in a university
At this time of year, to be officially welcomed
We’re invited to gatherings with huge amounts of cheese
The abundance I think is not a guess at how much will be consumed but
An investment against the look of a platter mostly eaten
With my fingers on a sliver of comté I think
What I touch has been inside the body of a cow
& now in this carpeted room
(milk being quotation from grass)
Are pastures of the Jura
It’s the labor of those who pay tuition
That spreads their verdure within me
In my poem about leisure, I thought of a Lucy Ives poem that begins
“to all other things what I prefer most is thinking what I really think”
When at work, I feel I am excused
From needing a personality
I come & go
While time remains neutral, remains indifferent
My boss can’t tolerate Play as It Lays because the characters, she says, have no “inner life”
A savor of poolside & tears is all I’ve retained
Forgetting is de facto a kind of refusal but
Saying “I agree” was by default a lie
Regarding my own involvement, no sentence
Waves the banner of my heart
Like Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to”
Without his rigorous abstention, that is, without opting de facto to die
It is a stance through which I wink at my stance
Now in a chair, now on the train
A tote to hold my gym shoes & lunch
In the locker room two strangers discuss someone named Barb
Who has said to drink iced coffee while working out is “not the worst”
From the shower I hear one say to the other
“When someone tells me something I want to do
I believe it”
I N T H E N E X T R O O M A L W A Y S
You will find me lying down
Oranges strewn across the floor
Already today work placed me
In time that moves one way
The nation another, autobiography a third
Each space I entered
Instructed my posture
Made me a new sculpture
This is my dream of the afterlife
An orange at the base of my neck, sacrum
Under the backs of my knees
In half light, adjacent
Our fear &
Everything wastable
Everything I was guilty of wasting
P R O M E N A D E
It is spring why not
place your hands
on your sun-warmed
hair a swell of ease
you can ride
now crossing
your path is
a woman in low-
slung mules
you want
what she has
easy limbs &
deft gait
but don’t you
already have this?
the wash
of grasping
a go-to
trick light
in the distance
the latest new
tower o god
to see your
giant hand
rip the sky
& work the glass
the owners
at climax ejected
into the clouds
the building
ever-mutely poking
the sun
on your chest
& the sudden
urge to shop
spilt rice
in the gutter
you think at first
bird guts?
the early day
angled down
in lavish display
L A N D S C A P E W I T H C A R T I L A G E
Butcher in his dark
smock, he’s got his
fingers in the fact
of the killable body.
Chorus of oxen
their warm necks
for millennia pleasing
the gods. Butcher’s
storefront gone
from the streets
of my modern-day
city. In the corner
of the far room, old
steam heater & me
at my small desk.
Single fact of presence
in the body, whorling
school of minnows
wall of a thousand
gnats in one swarm.
Interior with white-blue
bloodless, nerveless hours.
Butcher, by the river he took
the fact-struck Orpheus
into his arms & rocked.
With his mothering fingers
I braid my hair.
Contributor
Allyson PatyAllyson Paty's poems can be found in Boston Review, Tin House, jubilat, Kenyon Review Online, the PEN Poetry Series, and elsewhere. She is from New York, where, with Norah Maki, she is co-founding editor of Singing Saw Press and, with Emily Skillings, co-curator of the Earshot reading series.
