and
there are sunflowers
I used to talk to with grandma
and wished to grow up into;
there are beaches
covered in empty shells –
and gawky scratches in the sand between disintegrating mussels;
there are hands
colder than liquid nitrogen –
and spreading a liquid fragrance that takes the shape of brain grooves;
there are winter blooming trees
holding onto promises of parted hands
and sheltering forgotten bullets;
there are songs
I only listened to while chopping onions
and munching on certain memories;
and when gazing through train wheels –
dry winds disrobe hundreds of magnolias of their pinkish buds –
their unadorned shapes
and a weak silage of the perfume camellias wear before a storm
melt into prayers escaping from the church across the sea
as winter deepens.
| Luisa-Evelina Stifii |
|
levelheaded: and
The first five stanzas of this poem begin with the phrase “there are.” It’s a simple refrain, but it shapes the poem’s sense of time. The speaker uses a present-tense “are,” but she also seems to mean “were.” That’s because she’s describing memories—perhaps the “certain memories” she munches on while “chopping onions.” The phrase “there are” places the memories in the present even as they point toward the past. The memories alternate between sentimentality (“I used to talk with grandma,” “promises of parted hands”) and the threat of death and decay (“disintegrating mussels,” “hands / colder than liquid nitrogen,” “forgotten bullets”). The stanzas don’t coalesce into a solid narrative. Instead, this is a poem of tone and transition. It oscillates between pleasure and danger in a way that shapes what we think about the speaker.
“[T]here are” is a phrase we all say without much thought. By prominently repeating the phrase, the poem highlights the phrase’s strange abstractness. What does it mean that these images, these places “are”? And where exactly are they? The poem’s title also works this way. Does “and” connect the poem’s stanzas? What would it mean if the stanzas were connected? These plain bits of language take on fresh importance in a poem that uses them as a title or refrain. They also serve as the poem’s structure, organizing what could be a disassociated set of abstract images into a coherent series.
The poem turns at the final stanza. With its final lines, the poem makes clear that the simple, conversational language of its earlier stanzas is not the only way. Breezy colloquialisms like “there are” and “used to” and “munching on” give way to beautifully pronounced phrases like “dry winds disrobe hundreds.” You can almost hear the flutter and flap of magnolia petals in the soft, repeating “d” sounds there. The final stanza sheds the phrase “there are,” and it disrupts a pattern of three line stanzas. It feels like the speaker snaps out of something, like she is shaken from a reverie, or possibly begins to enter one. Whatever the case, there may be a message in those final lines. The images in the last section are beautiful, but they also signal death—the death of the flowers, but also “as winter deepens,” the passage of one more year. Time has passed, but it’s also always passing.
-The Editors
