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All These New Caves

 

I’m snout deep in the grey rivers
of the curbs, who are built, clumsily

 

by the layers of yellow sediment
flowing from the parking garage

 

and into the thick glassy delta
of the offices downtown

 

leading me into something else
piped and subterranean

 

some place full of vapors and fish
and black elevator shafts

 

and shores of slick cement
painted with grey moss

 

where I lay, un-tying the knots
in the fur on my stomach

 

thinking, “Why do we argue
anyway? Oh, I forgot. It’s summer time.”




Jeff Hipsher

levelheaded: All These New Caves

 

In Jeff Hipsher’s “All These New Caves” the first-person narrator explores an urban landscape replete with modern day caverns. The curbs, and possibly the “grey rivers” that run in their adjoining gutters and pass through these caves, are personified by the word “who” in line two. Early on, then, Hipsher queues us into the idea that this landscape bears special human significance.

 

Though “built” by people in one sense, these curbs and/or rivers were “clumsily” created “by the layers of yellow sediment.” The color here is jarring, unnatural. In contrast, the word “sediment” softens the phrase. Hipsher’s choice of “yellow sediment” over, say, “yellow sludge” makes the creation of these curbs and rivers seem at least partly organic. While “yellow sludge” would make an obvious point about man’s negative impact on the natural world, “yellow sediment” hints that something is off while also implying the curbs and rivers are inevitable. They are natural to their environment.

 

In its form–one long sentence leading up to and embodying a quotation–the poem flows. Its limited punctuation enhances this effect. The recurrence of the word “and” pushes the poem forward like water through city streets. These streets contain caves in the form of “parking garages” and “subterranean” worlds with “black elevator shafts.”

 

Like a wild animal that has found its den, the narrator returns in the penultimate stanza. In this hollowed space, the speaker finds himself, as perhaps Hipsher does through the act of writing poetry, “un-tying the knots” on, and in, his stomach.  When we get to the final two lines, they seem like a troubling knot in the fur, but it’s one worth trying to untangle…

 

The surprising question the speaker thinks of humanizes the poem even further. “I” has become “we,” and suddenly more is at stake. While the question is a thought, it also seems like a recollection, implying that at some point our speaker had a relationship with someone else.

 

The strange response to the “Why do we argue / anyway?”  may refer to the fact that sometimes we fight for no good reason. Or, maybe we forget the good reason. Perhaps the reason we are fighting is because it is summer time. Or, maybe the point is that it’s foolish to fight in the sunniest of seasons. Could be that “I forgot” and “It’s summer time” have no direct correlation to one another. Or, the question and answer could not mean any of these things. In this way, Hipsher suggests that language itself is one of many new caves. Words are dark and deep. There’s all sorts of life inside.

 

 

– The Editors