For and with Donna de la Perriere, April 2016
Imagine Georgia, imagine the heat of her childhood, this, the heat of her poems, try. We are critics, eat noodles, laugh. Everything changes, but still. I imagine her in Boston, leaning over a pile of papers. I imagine her in Michigan, driving quiet roads. I imagine her in glasses, twenty-five, black dress, rifling through the papers. The papers smell like dust, like sweet glue. I want to know her knowing. Imagine her standing in front of a classroom for the first time. Her hands shake. These are my hands, shaking. She counts things: grapes, pills, days, words, exits. Things denote, things signify. Donna teaches how to accrete meaning, how to juxtapose signals. Male poets still feel benevolent in their encouragement, the Boston publishers smell like carpet, like withheld cash. Donna knows that we can all do better. She lays out the papers. She is unafraid of hospitals. I am scared of what money can do. The cats walk through the room. Precious, Donna says. She holds a glass of tea or whiskey. I hear the South in her teeth. Fear makes us brave. Donna with her foot on the gas, Donna choosing her words, Donna flushed and rushing, cracking a can of diet coke. Things she is not afraid of: water, weather, laughter. Give me a blank field now fill it with her language. Why do we write these things we can’t unmake why do we care about ears like peaches we are rooted, searching for the thing that makes it.
Circling Georgia, circling the dirt we can’t get back to. Only now we have poetry, now we can know, but still never see its completion. Want it, accrete. Is this female? Is it female to confess? Female to feel, Donna’s bare face and damp hair in the mirror, we are wives now. We know. Wives or wolves. We know that love is uncertainty. That resolve is fiction. We are wolves and/or wives. We want and we turn wanting into pleasure into language. Is this female? A poetics of wanting. But there is coherence, there is Donna of the chosen word. Donna whose language clicks in her teeth like counted beads. Things we do not fear: water, laughter, weather. I don’t know her catalogue, can only try to mimic the precision of her branches. Only know Donna of the unfaltering couplet. Donna calling out the delineated, hands drawn, critical of the obvious symbolism of the butterfly. The walls coloring and discoloring, driving rain, water, weather, laughter, trains passing, Donna making:
dimmed blue
night squall
parsing light
starlings crash
mouth organ
a flashlight passed back and forth in the dark
Donna, passing light. Donna parsing the bones, carving, opening, giving us space to see it
There is all of that. There is none of it.
Donna in orange and Donna in black on her wedding day, hair damp, turning the tube of lipstick, eyes framed, looking herself square in the mirror saying good enough to her bare skin. Oakland changes around her. Lights strung along the rooftop. A spell. Fairyland is still beside the lake. Her face is nearly bare on the night roof. She unfolds the page. Donna always in search of the pattern, the grape count, the weave of the windows, the exact threading – this color black is not the same as that color black. Donna lover of lurid color, Donna choosing her words, a thousand days for which there are no photographs, she does not need them. Donna teaches me accretion. She unfolds the page, teaches me sound. Donna keeps her secrets/gives up sugar/reads out loud, we show each other our bright toes. The lights are strung up on the rooftop. We must take pleasure. I want to know the way she knows.
All of this is more tender than I would have imagined:
There is a story about peeing in a basement, a story about not wanting to be seen in or out of tights. The lights are still halos in the lake. Everything changes. Donna sees I’ve painted on my face, part of the reveal. I want to know her knowing. It’s Christmas, we have wine or coffee. It’s November, there are biscuits and stitches in my jaw, I want to tell her everything first. It’s June and we have white tea in the park. We have the green damp and fountain, the church before the skyline. Time can spool forward, more and more loosely strung./I want and I do not want what I want.
Donna looks into the bathroom mirror on the day of her wedding, gently touches her mouth. We’re prickly with joy. The lights above the lake, the secrets in our fists. Wives or wolves.
This is only the beginning.
I’m caught up in stone fruit, in the violence of stone fruit. In the violence of what is female. Is this it? Is it penance? Is it in the dirt, the dark, the chalk bank, text, Donna giving nouns to the night, giving soft sound to the squall, verbs to light, touching paper that tastes of sweet glue. That these poems do not reveal truth but make it. That this is a laying out of the bones, a counting. This is an accretion, but also a making. She would not pretend. She would lay it out, count it, and then make something to place adjacent, something not to shield you from the lurid but to parse and/or parcel the reveal. This is not to make the person into the poetics. Is this female? Is this wrong? Lines on my face, her hands, paper that tastes of sweet dust. Donna making sign of violence, making sound of vehemence, Donna counting the bones and giving back the dirt. Her Georgia, my Massachusetts, there is no return, but now there is knowing. There is no return, but there are bones, and now we have poetry.
Circling Georgia, circling the dirt we can’t get back to. Only now we have poetry, now we can know, but still never see its completion. Want it, accrete. Is this female? Is it female to confess? Female to feel, Donna’s bare face and damp hair in the mirror, we are wives now. We know. Wives or wolves. We know that love is uncertainty. That resolve is fiction. We are wolves and/or wives. We want and we turn wanting into pleasure into language. Is this female? A poetics of wanting. But there is coherence, there is Donna of the chosen word. Donna whose language clicks in her teeth like counted beads. Things we do not fear: water, laughter, weather. I don’t know her catalogue, can only try to mimic the precision of her branches. Only know Donna of the unfaltering couplet. Donna calling out the delineated, hands drawn, critical of the obvious symbolism of the butterfly. The walls coloring and discoloring, driving rain, water, weather, laughter, trains passing, Donna making:
dimmed blue
night squall
parsing light
starlings crash
mouth organ
a flashlight passed back and forth in the dark
Donna, passing light. Donna parsing the bones, carving, opening, giving us space to see it
There is all of that. There is none of it.
Donna in orange and Donna in black on her wedding day, hair damp, turning the tube of lipstick, eyes framed, looking herself square in the mirror saying good enough to her bare skin. Oakland changes around her. Lights strung along the rooftop. A spell. Fairyland is still beside the lake. Her face is nearly bare on the night roof. She unfolds the page. Donna always in search of the pattern, the grape count, the weave of the windows, the exact threading – this color black is not the same as that color black. Donna lover of lurid color, Donna choosing her words, a thousand days for which there are no photographs, she does not need them. Donna teaches me accretion. She unfolds the page, teaches me sound. Donna keeps her secrets/gives up sugar/reads out loud, we show each other our bright toes. The lights are strung up on the rooftop. We must take pleasure. I want to know the way she knows.
All of this is more tender than I would have imagined:
There is a story about peeing in a basement, a story about not wanting to be seen in or out of tights. The lights are still halos in the lake. Everything changes. Donna sees I’ve painted on my face, part of the reveal. I want to know her knowing. It’s Christmas, we have wine or coffee. It’s November, there are biscuits and stitches in my jaw, I want to tell her everything first. It’s June and we have white tea in the park. We have the green damp and fountain, the church before the skyline. Time can spool forward, more and more loosely strung./I want and I do not want what I want.
Donna looks into the bathroom mirror on the day of her wedding, gently touches her mouth. We’re prickly with joy. The lights above the lake, the secrets in our fists. Wives or wolves.
This is only the beginning.
I’m caught up in stone fruit, in the violence of stone fruit. In the violence of what is female. Is this it? Is it penance? Is it in the dirt, the dark, the chalk bank, text, Donna giving nouns to the night, giving soft sound to the squall, verbs to light, touching paper that tastes of sweet glue. That these poems do not reveal truth but make it. That this is a laying out of the bones, a counting. This is an accretion, but also a making. She would not pretend. She would lay it out, count it, and then make something to place adjacent, something not to shield you from the lurid but to parse and/or parcel the reveal. This is not to make the person into the poetics. Is this female? Is this wrong? Lines on my face, her hands, paper that tastes of sweet dust. Donna making sign of violence, making sound of vehemence, Donna counting the bones and giving back the dirt. Her Georgia, my Massachusetts, there is no return, but now there is knowing. There is no return, but there are bones, and now we have poetry.