Emily Carr
from 13 Ways of Happily
draft 1, eye, white & spring.
1
the young housewife forging myth in the kitchen—like all
the old hopes, the beginning can only be called by what it is not
2
something panting—truly—in this ecstatic
anarchic release into the commonplace: the very thing (as foetus) & object
of enjoyment (amore propre) disoriented in the whitehot air
3
—yes everyday
falling while gravity
throws apples from the trees—
4
in which version did we—
a woman (double you’d
a child (so microscopically correct
a man (practices yes, no—
share that single cell?
5
in the leaf & bud & how the blue
swings swagger from cowboy
hats sparrows make happy dustbaths—
6
try to be patient. high above the old white
pinwheels in
the dilated gaze of the sublet
the sparrow’s eye, leafless—
with bewildered adjacency
7
as it falls—unchristened unclarified
every hour accidental a child & a chicken play tag in flight
from the everchanging it—.
8
—decaying now in finemilk
foam of sea the dream traces
a hand-picked wingbone unfading wax flower
9
it’s from this wound you first emerged
oblivious in excess fish in the air begging for sea
soul in the gap between
10
yes there is no one
to tell you for years you will fall, in
a gradual reenactment—.
11
listen. like wings sprouting in the mind the bonepile grows
12
but these are very real, very precise
butterflies all-mond brown & a-mind white an ecstasy of
crystalline palimpsest wobbling across wheatfields swayed—
like skyscrapers or trees—
13
from time to time do we all
go through this dissolve root to leaf
of now intimate at last, on the tremolo
near wingtip
after J. Retallack
draft 2, & you know this is your fate to waver.
1
on a rainspun afternoon when bombs
fall a continent away the season
flimmers like a watery jewel on the dream’s
cobweb & the sparrow of what you are wakes, this slaphappy derelict—
2
in the empty ballfield the rockies’ chalk
outline dissolves choked with chickweed
& wildradish the fatslush rain is trying to explain—.
3
forget about venetian blinds, slip
through that window—spilling like thick blonde milk a solo
joy note
4
crumpled spandex sun carmurder
noise dioxidedrunk magnolia & soon too
sparrow chorus
5
Christ whatever this strange hopeful fever—
in the mountains violets have broken
the rocks inaccurate grasses keep a feckless guard—
6
self conscious with beauty & food, a sobbing frog leapt from that generous pond
7
in the dazzling subdivisions where no
tree grows a she in loslung pants & spaghetti
strap zigzag catwalks utterly lost
in the morning hope of meat
8
(you do not
know which to prefer: the shadows of
lifesized fiberglass cows or the child with a
plush octopus, barking
9
aimless wasteful & drunk the sun is lunatic logic but lovely
yes like lemonjuice splashed
10
but world is one short, an off
number & you in your generous
bed are the last astonishing
mammal in whirligig slomotion solidifying from the dream
you are coming back through—
11
wheeling out of your ordinary
thighs through curtains & cloud yeast
the fine young season flails screes skirls
a mirage of buoyant polyglot—.
12
nearby by accident, green mountains melt
like jello in slo liberation the world turns on its stem
13
(you too are wavering you are careless
volunteering your seed—
after J. Kyger
13 Ways of Happily: Books 1 & 2 was chosen by Cole Swensen as the winner of the 2009 New Measures Prize & is forthcoming from Parlor Press in 2011. Emily Carr’s first book, directions for flying (2009) is available from Furniture Press. You can also read Emily’s work in recent issues of journals like Prairie Schooner, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal, Bombay Gin, Margie, Phoebe & Fourteen Hills.