In Each Dream Defeat
1
The villages of Prêcheur and Sainte-Philomène were receiving a steady stream of ash.
Spring: girl’s a rock of glass, a summons the beach rises after (breath stanched, bare anchorage
shipped to shore). One man
survived in his jail cell (no oxygen left to be burned). Hunkered down, turns amphibious, inhales
soil, an elegant old frog. Later,
finds himself lonely, everyone in free air having passed. No shelter, no fame: strains to eat trees,
grasps only lemon strips,
shards. Evenings, girl descends to meet him, navigating foot-on-foot ladders. Cottonmouths appear
as refuge, imprisonment
(speech lost, bold wake of bear-with)— guard pays her to leave,
but she signs never, and in that blank refusal births a world.
2
In the morning, people were observing the fireworks the mountain was displaying.
Spring: she lives each day as a trap to pry open, map to witness, fortress to found. Call in fireworks,
celebrating cattle (requested,
they chew cud till morning fades). No one saw the signs, or no one could get there that early. Ash on her
shirtback: she grinds in further,
stalking lace marks of defeat. Sorrow’s carnivalesque: dusk’s light showstops foreheads,
maddens woodgrain under eyes. The last will
be first, the trapped freed—city walls mangle each banged-out line—runners’ tracks blur rings,
eyewitnesses catch from afar: lingering,
stick a crown on disaster (we promise you’ll come out an honest man).
3
Spring: with each spin, another rock in her pocket, weeping doll on marionette thread. Throat-slicing
wind crosses (cutting’s just
another subtle pun). Whitecaps on water sling rubble, pebbles,
scrape legs bare. Each night she drags something behind her; purled or pulled, kneeled or healing,
always something reckless,
long-lived. Nights, she finds in each dream defeat (you’ll have to pull over this time). Whirling car engine:
miniscule, birdlike: stumbles and
rings. And yet doesn’t shift, no matter her moods, no matter white-beveled windows, (whose accident?)
(all neutral gears drown).
4
There are unnamed eyewitnesses to the eruption, probably survivors on the boats at the time of the eruption.i
Innumerable witnesses: someone’s seen her stumble (rocks projected at stomach, tossed with
scarred force at ears)—
someone’s watched sea winds forsake mountains, dropping bands of tessellated air—but yellow tape
confirms: she’s a hard one to
capture (darts around her forehead unfurl). Jack Sprat, mouse in the kitchen: all this would love to be a
sign. Cornered, she’d forget
asking questions, let distance hang low in knees. Tall
tales, bargains flock around her, endings float boats, catch
on air. Hope’s a distant listener (denouement’s shot)—
anger hurries off and ties her hands—
i “Wikipedia: Mount Pelée.” July 1, 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pel%C3%A9e
| Rebecca Givens Rolland |
|
levelheaded: In Each Dream Defeat
This poem’s primary subject is the eruption of Mount Pelée on Martinique in 1902, an event this editor would know nothing about if not for the citation included along with the poem. Intertextuality is a constant fact of reading and writing on the internet. It’s no surprise when we can find annotated, hyperlinked Moby Dick or crowd-sourced commentary on a Beyoncé song. What’s less obvious is the way our connection to all the information on earth affects how we read or compose poetry. Specifically, if a poet can assume her audience knows about the eruption of Mount Pelée (or if she can point her audience to a quick list of the event’s important details), her poem can reach that much farther into the murky truth without the audience being wearied by a spiral into speculation. These days, poems are outgrowths of a larger collective knowledge, which to us, is an interesting thought.
If this poem operates in that mode, it also revels unabashedly in poetic language. From the start, this poem forefronts its sounds. Hear the “ch” and “sh” sounds in “breath stanched, bare anchorage / shipped to shore.” The sounds are appropriately oceanic. Later, hear the percussive “city walls mangle each banged-out line” as we imagine collapse of buildings. The poem is possessed by its musicality. Its music is a gauze through which we interpret the events of the 1902 eruption as a metaphor for the speaker’s own loneliness and confusion.
What makes us think there’s something figurative in there somewhere? Most obviously, moments like the “Whirling car engine” and the “neutral gears” peak through the past and subtly point us away from the event of the Mount Pelée eruption. They connect the speaker’s contemporary experience of the world to the world she describes from a distance. The speaker’s interjections (“you’ll have to pull over this time,” “denouement’s shot,” etc.) inject self-consciousness into the poem. These moments place the speaker at the poem’s center, so she becomes as much a subject as the poem’s tragic eruption. She conflates herself with the girl who survives the eruption.
Even with this one-for-one conflation in mind, the poem is most effective when it’s a vessel for tone. The poem dances between public and private. We understand there is some narrative we are meant to follow. We understand “One man / survived in his jail cell” and stretch to picture “woodgrain under her eyes.” But moments like “runners’ tracks blur rings” or “Jack Sprat, mouse in the kitchen” flit outside of comprehension. These lines may draw tenuous connections between the speaker and her subject, but ultimately, we are guessing how they fit into the poem’s literal arc. And of course, that’s fine with us. If poetry is about concision, it’s also about truth. Quite often the crisp clarity of the perfect set of words, or the perfect depiction of past events, breaks down under the pressure of truth.
-The Editors
