Davis - Shattered sonnets, love cards, and other off and back handed importunities

shattered sonnets love cards
and other off and back handed importunities shattered sonnets
love cards and other off and
back handed importunities olena kalytiak davis
they thought it queer i didn't rise
i thought a lie would be queerere.d.table of dis- mal- contents Reader unmov'd and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc'd and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb. I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank season, countingI sleep and I sleep. I sleep, Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf as a leaf. Reader: Why don't you turnpale? and, Why don't you tremble? Jaded, staid Reader, Youwho can read this and not even flinch. Bare-faced, flint-hearted, recoilless Reader, dare youRare Reader, listen and be convinced: Soon, Reader, soon you will leave me, for an italian mistress: for her dark hair, and her moon-lit teeth.

For her leopardi and her cavalcanti, for her lips and clavicles; for what you want to eat, eat, eat. Art-lover, rector, docent! Do I smile? I, too, once had a brash artless feeder: his eye set firm on my slackening sky. He was true! He was thief! In the celestial sense he provided some, some, some (much-needed) relief. Reader much-slept with, and Reader I will die without touching, You, Reader, You: mr. small weed, mr. long-dark-day. long-dark-day.

And the italian mis fortune you will heave me for, for her dark hair and her moonlit-teeth. You will love her well in to three-or-four cities, and then, you will slowly sink. Reader, I will never forgive you, but not, poor cock-sure Reader, not, for what you think. O, Reader Sweet! and Reader Strange! Reader Deaf and Reader Dear, I understand you yourself may be hard pressed to bare this small and unnecessary burden having only just recently gotten over the clean clean heart break of spring. And I, Reader, I am but the daughter of a tinker. I am not above the use of bucktail spinners, white grubs, minnow tails.

Reader, worms and sinkers. Thisandthese curtail me to be brief: Reader, our sex gone to wildweather. YesReaderYesthat feels much-much better. (And my new Reader will come to me empty handed, with a countenance that roses, lavenders, and cakes. And my new Reader will be only mildly disappointed. My new Reader can wait, can wait, can wait.) Light -minded, snow-blind, nervous, Reader, Reader, troubled, Reader, what'd ye lack? Importunate, unfortunate, Reader: You are cold.

You are sick. You are silly. Forgive me, kind Reader, forgive me, I had not intended to step this quickly this far back. Reader, we had a quiet wedding: he&I, theparson &theclerk. Would I could, stead-fast, gracilefacile Reader! Last, good Reader, tarry with me, jessa-mine Reader. Dar (jee)ling, bide! Bide, Reader, tired, and stay, stay, stray Reader, true. R.: I had been secretly hoping this would turn into a lovepoem. Disconsolate.

Illiterate. Reader, I have cleared this space for you, for you, for you. a note on the author Olena Kalytiak Davis's first collection of poetry, And Her Soulout of Nothing, was selected by Rita Dove for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1997 and published by the University of Wisconsin Press.She has been chosen for inclusion in three Best American Poetry anthologies, and received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers'Award and a Pushcart Prize. She lives and writes in Anchorage, Alaska. In spring all the poems that need to be written Have. You are neither dejected nor relieved.

Scrape and Paint. Scrape and paint a grey house white. Feel something! Your husband, the one married to all the appetites, Shouts to someone up on a ladder, someone who looks sort of Like you: disinterested, spated, thin as a cloud. It's spring again and so the melancholiacs. And so the fat Sharp animals pace your roof at night: feeding, quilled, recurrent Dreams. You will never live up to this Life, they will never refer to you as voluptuous.

You can't remember the last time you wore a dress. You pressed your mouth To the phone. A wreath of violets lain where my brain used to be. Matutinal, frantic. The usual. I descend. I descend.

I work like a bird. I hear spring coming from a long mile off. A distant jungle-meadow. It comes, it sings. Says: To be heard you must be let, be in. To be heard It is best to hum, like water.

It's true, I am barnacled and black. The un Derbelly, the sternum, the prow. Was, I used to confess the nuns. Was, the prettier they were the less they said. Week after week whispered The one I loved like a secret: "I must avow. I'm of that type that's mostly Hype." I let Him forgive her merely on the strength of her brow.

Sister, Says I, wear it like a wife. Then I'd go wash my hands in mint and rose. May be, you are like me: all pose. May be, you are cutting each word harder And harder, to listen. I'mall watchandwile,waitingtobe Called. Lordy-lordy-lord, When I asked to be left alone, I didn't mean, like, now, like, this. Full-deep: All solace and solecism.

Un-sail-able. Un-vale-able. To spring, to light, to sleep. Spring is cheap, but clean of sky. Long after she used to meet him on the sly. He didn't say much, because to speak you need a voice, need lead.

Among the dead there were such fresh ghosts, they were still breathing. Through their mouths. Time, time, to adjust to an other. An ether O soNotoo sweet. Intox-icated with permeability. 'Tis nox ious, to eat evanescence.

However steadily, however slowly. They stemmed into heady blows. They missed the stain. Of blue berries and argument. They missed their lips. The yew and the thorns.

They missed. Their flaws. O, to be stung by an errant bee. O, to sting. O, to see you again. as if someone just handed me a bouquet made solely, entirely, of the absence of the word: Abundance. Thereby hand ing me everything! O, to Lack! I too am made (mostwholey) of that. as if someone just handed me a bouquet made solely, entirely, of the absence of the word: Abundance. Thereby hand ing me everything! O, to Lack! I too am made (mostwholey) of that.

Love brought me a handful of pussy willows to place near my face. A sick head and a sick heart ought be licked back to health, said said Love, all stealth. All stick and cue. Love, didn't I tell you, not to foot over threshold of mine? But Love was over, Love was under. Love was in. Love was wrought.

Love swept the house, then, Love was done. Aye, There's the rub! The phoenix and the turtle dove? Ha! Love, Love is nought. 'Tis true, we are all made of root And rue; head-down and head-long, trailing Like the arbutus. O great Arbiter! I keep A terrible secret. The staves acre. And the back Ache.

And the Longing, long and low. Old, hard news, Desire. That prick! And that Sting. All but made. All the promises I intend. To keep. To bend. To bend.

So-long So-sweet! I will Miss you! Doubt not, or do. I was true. I am Plaintive, but pliant. Think-me-not Heart-less or heed-less. None the less: I will. Ease back.

Once again. Yes. Exactly. As does Spring. So far, have managed, Not Much. So far, a few fractures, a few factions, a Few Friends.

So far, a husband, a husbandry, Nothing Too complex, so far, followed the Simple Instructions. Read them twice. So far, memorized three Moments, Buried a couple deaths, those turning faces. So far, two or Three Sonnets. So far, some berrigan and Some Keats. So far, a scanty list.

So far, a dark wood. So far, Anti Thesis and then, maybe, a little thesis. So far, a small Number Of emily's letters. So far, tim not dead. So far, Matt Not dead. So far, jim.