Some Notes Beginning With Winter
The winter
inclined to speak loudest
in a heated room
at 5am
with vague sleep-shapes
painting the walls
like demons
with teeth
but no jaw strength,
filtering as always
at 5am
a complex reality
through a single
sleepless eye
like drinking
an ocean
from a fast-food straw.
*
The winter
draws nearer her sex
like an overripe fruit
to my grass
below,
that always anticipates
in these late months
the body’s need for warmth
and gravity’s misinterpreted laws.
*
The winter
is a blind mother
stumbling over
the corpses of her children,
the crackling
and popping of skulls
and ribs underfoot.
She’s clinging to the balustrade
for balance
the entire length
of a never-ending river
she knows only as ice.
*
The winter
places its ear to my chest.
Then to hers.
Then its own.
And I ask aloud
to the morning
“are there nuances
to our wailings?”
| John Sibley Williams |
|
levelheaded: Some Notes Beginning With Winter
What’s up with Winter?
Four things, mainly.
One, the season lacks action, grows slow and motionless. We know that because there is no active verb in the opening section, only a long sub-sentence that modifies “The winter.” It is 5am and there are “sleep-shapes” around but someone is awake, slow and heavy, surrounded by demons themselves slow and heavy “with teeth / but no jaw strength[.]” Even worse, Winter is doomed by sleeplessness which is as long and excruciating as drinking an ocean through a straw.
Two, something sexual, if not kinky, is going on. Winter “draws nearer her sex[,]” “her” being an anonymous woman drawn by Winter towards the speaker, or Winter’s own sex, drawn to itself. Either way, it is drawn “like an overripe fruit / to my grass” and so, “[anticipates] gravity’s misinterpreted laws.”
Hm.
Ripe fruit would be a pretty obvious sexual image, but this fruit is overripe. Perhaps it is too late for intimacy. Look what happens to the grass: fruit plus gravity makes it squashy. Is it mushy-squashy or cozy-squashy, as in “the body’s need for warmth”? This stanza boasts a deliberate awkwardness that adds to the poem’s mystery. The line breaks of “to my grass / below, / that always anticipates” creates an awkward rhythm, which begs to be “misinterpreted.” It might be too cold for sex and too cheesy to need warmth. As if the speaker says, when Winter finally comes everything is overripe. It’s just too much.
Three, enters mother. And as often with mothers, things grow Freudian. She’s “stumbling over / the corpses of her children” while “sex” and the “overripe fruit” are still in memory. She too, is stuck with an endless water-source, this time a “never-ending river / she knows only as ice.” She—mother? She—Winter? Things are definitely “crackling” and “popping” at this point.
Four, Winter (read: a sleepless, ocean-drinking, demon-surrounded, verb-less entity. Read: grass under overripe sexual weight. Read: mother who crushes her dead children) “places its ear” to the speaker’s chest, places its ear to the chest of “hers” (mother’s? anonymous woman’s?), places its ear to her own chest. Waiting to hear the heartbeat. Looking to quiet down and be comforted. Looking to understand itself.
As winter looks to understand itself, so does the speaker, asking, “’are there nuances to our wailings?’” But to ask is futile, and the speaker knows it. There’s a difference between “[a]nd I ask aloud / to the morning / are there nuances / to our wailings?” and “[a]nd I ask aloud / to the morning / ‘are there nuances / to our wailings?’” The quotes don’t allow the question be an integral part of the poem. Instead, they point out the speaker’s self-awareness. It is an understanding that the question is somewhat silly, fruitless, nearly crazed in light of the earlier stanzas. There are, of course, nuances to our wailings. But one can’t decipher emotion by “filtering […] a complex reality” more than one can drink an ocean through a straw. Try as we may, we would probably end up merely seeking a chest to rest upon.
– The Editors
