This World
I am alone making guacamole, and he is on a plane
getting ready to act out marriage rituals
with people who will stop calling once the kids come.
I feel skeletal and ashamed like my insecurities
have made me instead of the other way around.
That’s when I stab myself with a serrated knife
attempting to extract a pit from an avocado.
Blood bubbles behind the bundle of loose nerves
like oil waiting to erupt from the ocean floor.
Living, I suppose, is a lot like mining.
Most days you find nothing.
But how strange and humbling it is to realize that your skin
is no tougher than a sheet of rice paper,
your heart no more resilient than a light bulb,
your love no less a stranger than an old classmate
you make eye contact with in passing at the gas station.
He will come back to me or he will not,
and I will go on living. The window into my hand,
before the blood remembers its job is to flow,
is so deep and clean I lose my breath,
and for once see the world exactly as it is—a boat
that we let carry us off. We could
just as soon throw the anchor down,
light the dynamite, and swim away.
| Rae Hoffman |
|
levelheaded: This World
How strange and humbling it is to realize that your skin is no tougher than a sheet of paper. That is a compelling idea, which is also an exact quote from Rae Hoffman’s poem. We put it this way without quotes and without a mark for the line break after “skin” just to show how this poem speaks: with clarity, with full sentences, saying what it wants to say without unnecessary jazz.
Earlier in the poem the speaker cuts herself trying to fight an avocado pit out of its comfort zone. She uses the verb “stab” rather than cut, which adds a subconscious intention to a seemingly accidental occurrence. The struggle with the avocado and the pain that ensues reflect the struggle with the now absent lover who “is on a plane” and “will come back […] or […] not.”
All through the poem, the speaker stays focused on that cut as her source of inspiration and mirroring. She sees it as a “window into my hand” or into her heart, the latter observed as “no more resilient than a light bulb.” It shines and burns out. It isn’t a poem of despair though; there’s a certain acceptance, if not outright triumph, in the speaker’s acceptance of her reality. “I will go on living,” she concludes, before adopting the almost celebratory abandonment of the ship – “anchor down,” blow the thing up, “swim away.”
We could tie together some descriptions of the “I” to get a sense of the speaker’s distress: “I am alone,” “I feel skeletal and ashamed,” “I stab myself,” “I lose my breath” but also notice the mix of well-grounded descriptors, the ones that create sanity, optimism: “I suppose” (you have to hold yourself together to suppose), “I will go on living,” and “see the world exactly as it is—a boat / that we let carry us off.” That the last pronoun of the poem is “we” and not “I” gives the ending a healthy sense of solidarity.
Going back a bit, “I feel skeletal” is a nice touch. We can think of “skeletal” as relating to the skeleton, the sight under the skin, a precursor to the stabbing two lines below. We can also think of it as the thin, rice paper-like quality of our skin (and body) – how rickety it may feel at times. Or, we can go the literary way and think of “skeletal” as fragmentary, incomplete, an outline to be written into a full work. All of these fit the speaker and the situation. “Skeletal” is also nicely coupled with “ashamed.” The former sneaky and elusive, the latter heavier and more confessional, these two balance each other well, add a little jazz to “This World” after all.
– The Editors
