Poem
I want to be a tiny mike on your violin
the gem that solves everything. I’d
love to be a Liz Taylor, rising up from the foam of every thing—
the Adriatic in commercials, techno-azure—dripping water n pearls—
plain matchless. I’d gone years in the service of the county
of L, one of its smaller cogs, who gets a windowless office—
worshiping through the frame
affectionately, behind the lens; a pleasant face. Don’t
wish me well. Don’t say you like me. Just slap
me on the ass at the end of the shoot— cause I
have never sat in a giant stiletto-shaped glass!
I’ve never been burned for, through the door, by a doe. At best
I was a dull ache, nostalgia—but don’t mistake me, I don’t pity
myself: I take
my checkered memory to the park on the weekend
and serve straw wine on it
“The Dishwasher’s Picnic,” and
the bigger the wound
the better I am for it.
I dreamed of clear waves like arches
an amusement park in the snow. I was fleeing
from the bad inverted R, & today
I’m asking myself
why am I so useless? Isn’t it your world I’m supposed to be changing?
Maybe if I were Liz, dripping pearl. At that moment, Liz Taylor
must have believed in the balance of culture and matter:
through the spell of pearl sweat & seawater—
O to feel the culture of your desire. To resurrect against your body like that.
To resurrect the body of your desire. This scullery maid is a freaking Messiah!
Even if it takes a very long time
wandering, sitting in the desert
taking in the heat
on the dunes… Until they’re not like unto breasts,
but dunes.
I’m so relieved I’m in love with you.
It’s like being on the other side of a big
old Mississippi
I can think into your face buffeted by video grain. You won’t let me watch
your videos but I’m watching your videos
it’s time I saw everything, plum just out of peach—
I love that your limbs are all smeared in your culture’s amber, history’s peach, this is
another kind of balance
of nurture and culture, the-nature-
of-time-meets-the-culture-of-the-inside, and
it’s the best beauty they ever made, the best one they ever, yet.
When I was five, at a sleepover
my little girlfriend Mojca and I said to each other
we were raping each other, because
we didn’t know a different word. Of course we were grounded.
The chewed Barbies were unspeakable. Is this where all the stupid shame furls from?
Is it that to get into a face
is to get close to a mike
that yells you back into the cavern of you, messes with your Pharaoh mask?
They say Liz & Richard had a pretty tough time
filming Cleopatra; what’s on the tape, though, is
gold.
But I prefer how you look in your wheelchair,
truly. Through the burl of purl, come hither
and you’re in front of me. Now you go right into me. You’re in me.
You’re on the other side, and our backs are touching.
We sleep… We’re the itchiness under the eyelids
and we’re passing over some docks
and the moon’s coming out and there’s
night blooms. It’s not too late
I say: tell me it’s never too late for this poem,
and then you go:
| Ana Božičević |
|
levelheaded: Poem
Unless the “you” in “Poem” plays a literal violin—and even if so—right smack at the start of the piece the speaker’s extreme worldview is apparent. With the instrument’s cameo, we can’t help but think of the world’s saddest song on the world’s smallest violin, and the array of characteristics connected to that idiom (melodrama, indulgence, exaggeration). The speaker’s wish is to “be a tiny mike on your violin / the gem that solves everything.” Now we’ve implicitly got on our hands the world’s saddest song, the world’s smallest violin, and “everything,” which apparently possesses the ability to be solved by a single precious jewel.
“I” is an exhausting being already. She continues throughout the long poem to reach and rove and amplify. On top of her first wish, she says she’d “love to be a Liz Taylor, rising up from the foam of every thing.” The indefinite article here is used kind of weirdly (“a Liz Taylor” instead of Liz Taylor). Maybe this alludes to the object (countable) Taylor became or almost became. Obviously no one can be Liz Taylor, but perhaps we can be “a” Liz Taylor. And what better figurehead of exaggeration than Liz Taylor, with her glamorous, much publicized life? It’s as though the speaker would love and will attempt to be just about anything as long as it’s “plain matchless” and wildly far in any direction.
For our exceeding speaker—who seems to be endlessly trying to answer the question she asks herself, “why am I so useless?”—the universe veers, ungrounded, unreasonable. She sits “in the desert / taking in the heat / on the dunes . . . Until they’re not like unto breasts, / but dunes.” Her surroundings, instead of existing in their natural states, oddly must revert back to them. It requires “a very long time / wandering, sitting” for her to see the dunes as dunes. Then: “I’m so relieved I’m in love with you. / It’s like being on the other side of a big / old Mississippi”—a similar moment, with that jarring “a,” to the “a Liz Taylor” one.
“[I]t’s time I saw everything,” the speaker says. She’s trying and trying to squeeze it all into a lifetime—hell, into this poem. But as the piece nears its finish it quiets down, with the speaker and “you” represented in a variety of positions, meditative poses, not unlike stitches being knit together (see “Through the burl of purl”): “you’re in front of me. Now you go right into me. You’re in me. / You’re on the other side.”
This interlocking mellows everything out. It’s a wonderful, fresh calm for the speaker, who seems to experience rare silence or settling down at the end of the poem: “I say: tell me it’s never too late for this poem, / and then you go.” And if “you” “goes”—leaving or saying nothing—then, intimately entwined, so does the speaker.
– The Editors
