noteworthy
In each issue, the editors choose a writer they would like to bring
to the readers' attention.In this issue, poet Emily Bludworth de Barrios is highlighted.
Horace Walpole was the son of the first prime minister of England, Robert Walpole. He also wrote the gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto in 1764. Emily Bludworth de Barrios uses various phrases and sentences from the novel to prompt the poems presented here. The implications of where these prompts take her jars: "Get / your skin-to-skin contact / while / you’re able". The unexpected tiptoes through these poems: "Lapus lazuli, gold, honey, sex / and our delicate delicate delicate delicate teeth". Let us have a moment of silence because "A period of silence / is a column with a hole at the top and a hole underneath".
"If thou art of mortal mould"
"It is piety alone that can distinguish us from the dust from whence we sprung"
"He instantly set out for the wood that had been marked in his dream."
"with a mixture of grace and humilty,"
"—but man was not born for perfect happiness!"
"and now with more serenity"
Wanting
always to be your young wife
I’ll
die and get purple and black
Therefore
I am wanting to make
death
more like a story
A
story is a thrilling thing
to
hear or be inside of
Orpheus
torn apart by maenads
sounds
clean practically
A
story is capable
of
cleaning things up
Wanting
always to be your young wife
I’ll
die and get purple and black
A
story so dark
it
ends like this
So long
You
die Me too
Imagining
a funereal bier
burning
on water at night
Glaze
of light on water
It
is an orange and glossy celebration
I
would love it
if
each death were a glorious death
with
a glossy celebration
Instead
of so little-seeming
(60
folks milling about on Berber carpet at the Jeter Memorial Funeral Home)
At
least the entire success of the dead
is
a glorious skyscraper we live inside
To
live among the technology and materials of the dead
Their
many contributions
jingling
from the sky
Wanting
always to be your young wife
I’ll
die and get purple and black
I’ll
fall apart like a cobweb
and
before that I’ll break
probably
All
the dead skeletons
dancing
in the Earth
wishing
us well
infants
that we are
flying
across the sky
in
silver tubes worrying
With
a crooked list of priorities
You
must needs
arrange
your priorities
Continue
to work
Your
integrity securely pinned about you
Gather
the sleepy puppy
of
your husband
Get
your skin-to-skin contact
while
you’re able
"It is piety alone that can distingusish us from the dust from whence we sprung"
Another thing I never understood
was how and why some people
move through life like glittering scales
and others shrink and slip inside their skins.
And then you don’t know which of the two
you are:
the shimmering one
or the mottled dish sponge afraid to speak
lest your words betray your confusion.
To continuously break and to continuously move forward.
Small- and medium-sized problems you find
in your path throughout your day like islands
you arrive at
in which to be always ascertaining your worth.
"He instantly set out for the wood that had been marked in his dream."
The cat sits in the chair.
Night sits in the chair.
The apartment is full of things that don’t move.
I’m just now interested in the way Asteroid
works his way towards sleep.
A ponderous slitting of the eyes.
The head which wobbles.
I shift and he opens back up.
Now like a pile of sand nodding off.
I could never be a pile of sand like that.
To be human is to think and do.
I must always be acting upon.
Through doing
I am the long art project of my life.
"with a mixture of grace and humility,"
Let us have a brief period of silence
During which time
you will think about nothing
and you will have the qualities of a silver coin
A period of silence
is a column with a hole at the top and a hole underneath
The second period of silence commences now
"—but man was not born for perfect happiness!"
In the suburbs there are white teeth
(crisp white frosty white snowcap
frozen fluorescent teeth)
Poorer people have more realistic teeth
Sometimes much more beautiful
(wide toothed gapped smile like a blow to the guts)
Sometimes less so
(a curled fist of teeth in a modest and apologetic mouth)
To be modest and apologetic makes one more loveable,
especially when the teeth are like a claw of a hand
Sometimes there is a single tooth which is way too forward,
or one that hangs in the shadows (a shadow tooth)
Or a dragon tooth pointing the way to righteousness
Also teeth which are totally the wrong shape
Also the pharaohs lying on slabs
doused with gold and inlaid turquoise
and eyes fashioned of deliquescent contours
in a room of gold chairs and steady oxen
and stars on the ceiling and teeth ground down in the mouth
from a lifetime of minute grains of sand
It is a terrific mouth of pain
Lapus lazuli, gold, honey, sex
and our delicate delicate delicate delicate teeth
I miss the old people
who are real grown ups
Who cared more about
farming than their interior lives
Make a mayonnaise sandwich and
fetch the water jar
Run it out to granddaddy over yonder
Old people more concerned with the correct way
of cultivating animals and plants
Than with plunging or plundering
their inner depths
Church was for panty hose and
Sunday songs
Let me fix you biscuits
and gravy
Come onto the back porch and
shell these peas with me
Old people strong as a cow or
a barrel full of dill
Playing dominoes in lamplight
The efficacy of regular work
smoothing away
Shards of inadequacy and disappointment
No space for a full evening of self-doubt
I’m going out to check the kittens in the barn
Emily Bludworth de Barrios is the author of the chapbook Extraordinary Power (Factory Hollow Press, 2014). The titles of the poems that appear here have been taken from the text of Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.
