Entering the Last Note
Short Line, Long Line, and so on...
Reflections in a Concave Mirror
Puzzles
Invasion of the Impossibilities
from Hands
Answers
Thief
A Promise Only
waiting... waiting... then
“As the world ends, to enter
The last note of its music.”
– Denise Levertov
The beat of the world –
brush against drumhead,
slide of the bass, smooth
and buttery, pulse of guitar
in a dark room, the voice,
wispy and reaching… is who
I am now. The lyrics, a play
inside my head – the music,
a map to follow. And I do.
I look at my hand, slowly
closing my fingers against
palm, over and over.
The morning stretches
in front of me – each
step something different,
every word a dream –
and what I see and know:
the unfamiliar. When
I go, nothing forgotten,
I carry the world in a sack
on my left shoulder –
Short Line, Long Line, and so on...
“Between a mother
& child passes
information that otherwise
could not exist.
That no one else
can know.
The mother, the healer
& the wound
maker. The child,
the mother’s biographer.”
– Susan L. Leary
What exists between
a father and child can’t be found in DIY
books or reality shows
with talking heads or in seminars with
well-meaning mouths
expounding how they understand this or
that, saying the two
have reached some sort of plateau footing
which could be a good
thing I guess, could be a missing goal maybe –
but the real life might
be a nightmare, a hell, a death, or even worse.
Endless tangles of
doubt fill the head: was I strong enough was I there
did I care did I
give away enough of self should I did I was I ever
what I needed to be
did I make our world safe did I make a difference –
The purest hope is
the child outlives the parent. For a mother or a
father to be the one
left – I have no words… Only the child can give
the story its truth:
at best a wound, as the poet writes, and at worst,
a distance so far
it can’t be crossed. What remains is stillness,
questions unanswered,
an empty never filled no matter the trying
or wishing or longing –
left only with a perfect ache for something
which cannot be
again – but was beautiful in its moment.
Reflections in a Concave Mirror
“Amor Fati – ‘Love Your Fate,’ which is in fact your life.”
– Nietzsche
1. Driving from Derry to Plymouth, October 2015
– after Robert Frost
Leaving me only the beautiful words, he was certain I couldn’t describe pain, so I said malevolent, discord, punitive, and felt good about it – only words, I said –
No curse to speak them, but to put them to paper?
Now they stare back in a long, depraved look I’ve wished for, late at night, alone – now those words have the will to do, to shake loose the wet, hard moment to multiply, replenish, let go in the sweat of body language, to forever change anything that connects.
I’ve read that book – dog-eared and underlined.
This is no field of blue, no dead moth, no spider.
This is the other, the one beyond reason – every page, one less page – every word, one scratch closer to almost but never quite knowing.
2. A Universe Conspiring
– after Emerson
The woman I saw twenty years ago – dead on the 81 – still hangs her arm out the rolled down window –
Her head, as though she were dreaming – I hear in excelsis Deo in another room – rests on the door, passenger side, and I wonder why the window is rolled down in the cutting winter air –
Was she, in that last moment before the car flipped, righting itself after plowing the wide median, trying to let in the cold –
Was it all too much and she couldn’t wait another moment –
Or worse, was it not enough –
And why am I thinking of her now –?
And why am I – why are you, safe in your cushioned chair, the computer’s screen dark, hours tipping slowly toward dawn, still thinking of her –?
3. Celebration Day
– after Lucille Clifton
Do we celebrate the dead speaking to us, whispering our names, a planchette pulling us closer, still closer each day – miserable and extraordinary separated only by a razor’s edge?
The thin giving that is most human in the heart, both muscle and a way of living, opens itself.
A bloom to the sun.
What we hear, we do, so we listen.
Our fingers move to truth.
What we see, we believe, holding it inside us like the grave that’s always empty, like the secret we bury in our breathing, like the first bird’s call.
“I want people to lose themselves in the frame…”
– Chantal Akerman, on her film Hotel Monterey
Nothing I can tell you will make this easier. A Hopper
painting come to life – all dust and mirrors, bodies almost
perceived, the long, empty corridors, darkened to a maze
of patience, of desire – at times, feet moving as if this living
were a fresco, impossible to escape – the motion in non-motion
that is nowhere in time. Lives creeping into corners to want,
to watch, to wait. The bed unmade, the constant smile – but
the eyes, unwilling to stop their tense shifting – leave only betrayal.
Faces sag with grief and webs of the absurd that is this city, while
the talk is static, white noise, rumbles with no real language – and
none needed – silence everywhere – and the brittle things which
cannot last, cannot take hold, can’t die since they’re dead already –
searched for but never found. A faucet drips. The toilet lid is up.
An elevator door opens, closes. The stairs have lost their reason –
and beauty is where you left it. One door ajar. Sometimes,
a curtain is pulled aside – not to see but to let in – glimpses
from the other world – a run-down roof, its bars of iron,
the slow burn of white that is dawn, tough lines of trees
to the edge, a river below, its ripples drifting, smoke rising
from warehouses – and wall after wall of sleepy windows.
The deep grime of day begins its crawling.
Invasion of the Impossibilities
“as the aliens gaze down upon the dissolution of
humanity and smell a golden opportunity”
– Sara Lippmann
The world unglues itself from reason
Every footstep the last or so it seems
Who can say see know hear buy or find
any truth Where are the signs Where
are all the arrows marking “walk here”
telling me this is the path And tell me
again why I should trust this Where
have the lights gone Can anyone see
When will I be given my one phone
call What are the charges When can
I speak When will I cross the river
the street the yard Where are my
lanes How do I know this one video
is the true view How can I possibly
know How do I know these words
you’re telling me are the truth And
why would you lie More importantly
why would you tell me the truth What’s
the payoff Who’s funding you now
buying you off to keep talking to keep
your mouth shut Who is pulling at
your strings If you didn’t know you
had strings Why not Are you ignorant
or blind or too busy Who made you
that way gave you the right not to
know not to believe to say hey try
this watch this read this hear this
to say hear me now believe believe
believe reject reject reject How can
anyone write in such a time as this
But wait Haven’t I heard this before
No doubt I’ve been reading Adrienne
Rich filtering Celan sifting Brecht
imagining Simone Weil and Foucault
Everything leading to Roland Barthes
with his heavy heavy words about books
Each page “a tissue of quotations drawn
from the innumerable centres of culture”
Heavy yet hope-infused somehow Maybe
that’s so I would recognize the myriad of
sources Not then but now Not now but
hereafter Those fragile cultures about to
break and disappear with all their knowing
and nothing I can do to stop it or so history
tells me But then there’s Sara sitting by her
window in New York City Looking out over
the morning grains under clouds with lines of
purpose and want and do Beneath a vast
darkness beyond the circle paths Giving way
to shoreless seas of stars And their questions
that find more questions and more still
With no replies humming the wires
And yes It’s questions all the way out
You cannot see me from where I look at myself.
– Francesca Woodman
1. Into an Unknown
This is a map for
translating my body
into an unknown
just out of reach—
somewhere between
the soul & lines & space
that is the moment
I can almost touch
– after then at one point i did not need to translate
the notes; they went directly to my hands 1976
2. Shadows
This is how I disappear—this is the world
I’ve made and am making (you could walk
here if you’d only let yourself)—it continues
when my shadow thins, when my will is lost
in corners, when edges of windows are the only
light—I disappear when the silence of the image
in your hand is the same weight as forever (you
cannot hold me—you cannot find me)—which
is the same as an empty page—what is not
said could fill volumes for no one to read
– after Space 2, Providence, Rhode Island,
1976 [moving figure]
3. Fleeting
There are no flames, but they must be there—
There’s a heat on your face from a spark buried
in your faith to burn against your doubters,
against those who will not save you if they could
The birch bark you wear on each forearm
is a prison, is fuel, is the dark earth where
you are going—if you haven’t gone already—
your arms joined in front of you, one hand on
top of the other—no fists—your war is silence—
says your cheeks and closed mouth, says your eyes
glancing down from their grief, from their hope,
from their obsession with the beautiful
– after Untitled 1980, MacDowell Colony,
Peterborough, New Hampshire
Whose voice do
I hear in these walls,
in the tops of trees
when the dark wind
circles my head,
in the tide coming in –
whose words keep
telling me their heft
and flight – is it my
tongue moving – am I
saying or being said –
some other breath in
the fields – some other
voice in the mist
“next year's words await another voice”
– TS Eliot
“Silence is all we dread.
There’s Ransom in a Voice—
But Silence is Infinity.
Himself have not a face.”
– Emily Dickinson
“…you can’t steal the spirit of art. As fast as technology moves, I think artists can move faster.”
– Alan Warburtan, artist / filmmaker, who made The Wizard of AI, a documentary using AI, the first ever according to Warburtan
The heart is a thief, stealing anything
not bolted down, not chained or tied,
staking a claim, making it its own,
filtering it with new blood, new faces,
new ways to speak. The words will be
different, but the meaning, the same,
which isn’t possible – but is. The soul
is a thief, never sated, never content
in the doing – but must keep taking
whatever’s needed. No one sees it but
can feel it in any dark stillness if paying
close attention to the details. The soul
will bed you, will keep you wanting.
There are at least a million ways – no
one can know how to search for that.
It will find you. They will find you.
Like steam from a pot on a stove in
winter, or river ice at dawn, or voices
from a back room asking you, telling
you what reality is. The soul is there.
The hand is a thief, taking what it wants,
but it gives too – with a touch so light,
so quick, you’d never know or feel it
on a crowded street. It’s a help, a hurt,
the way to discover or bury, a way
to point into the night sky, to trace
the outline of distant lights, showing
patterns of myth so deep you’ll shake
your head against the beauty of it while
a light breeze makes you tremble with
forever. Deus ex machina cannot give
that to you, cannot follow the indefinite
arc, nor solve the unsolvable, can never
know the rub of flesh or the taste of water
after a long mountain trail. The wheels
keep turning. But given enough time,
the human spark will have burned out,
words will have lost meaning, the canvas
will be empty, the film stopped, the dance
over, the last song will have been written,
played, and sung. The narrative of the body
will end. Leaving only the silence –
…postcards
To Osip,
Everything is frozen here – streams
and sheep’s thick wool in the broken
stubble of fields – even the moon
presses her lips to stars for heat.
My heart’s a stone in a deep well,
and darkness is my love. He burned
my words for rage, but they’ll find
their own way – refusing to end.
My sleepless eyes scald the night,
and this bowl, like a stranger’s
hand, is empty for me to fill.
– Anna A.
Petrograd
Winter 1919
A reply…
I’ve written “words are unnecessary,”
and that is true – but what would it be
like to believe in words so much you
would die for them if you spoke them,
if you wrote them? That’s the world I see,
the one I’ve come to in my own forbidding
cold – that has no end. Of course, it does,
but I won’t be able to speak of it, so let me
say now – believe in your world – the one
you’ve made, the one you stand on. Believe
but know there’s a cost. My silence is near.
Once you’ve known the power of space and
breath and language, it’s hard to let go.
– O
transit camp, Vladivostok
Winter 1938 (unmailed)
– after “Owl’s Misfortune,” a song by Béla Fleck,
Edgar Myer, Zakir Hussain, Rakesh Chaurasia)
and The Trees Have Ears And The Field Has Eyes
(c. 1500), a drawing by Hieronymus Bosch
a journey in every song
like roads unseen through
mountains holding back
the sheer oblivion of storm
that waits beyond trees cliffs
and rivers like the field with
its darkness wet and cold like
paths splitting to and from
giving all possibilities a place
like the sweep of grackles in late
fall like the voice of someone
who knows like the music of
clouds the moon the branch
and the stories they tell to
the wind like these words
only the owl can hear
Sam Rasnake is the author of Fallen Leaves (Rare Swan Press, forthcoming), Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit), and Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press). His works, nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, have appeared in Wigleaf, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stone Circle Review, Harpy Hybrid Review, FRiGG, Thrush, Boudin (McNeese Review), Moist Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Anthology, Best of the Web, and Bending Genres Anthology. Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social or Twitter @SamRasnake.
