Rivera - Scaffolding: poems

SCAFFOLDING PRINCETON SERIES OF CONTEMPORARY POETS Susan Stewart, series editor For other titles in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets see page 85 SCAFFOLDING Poems Elna Rivera PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Copyright 2017 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket image courtesy of Russell Switzer All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rivera, Elna, author. Title: Scaffolding : poems / Elna Rivera. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2017] | Series: Princeton series of contemporary poets Identifiers: LCCN 2015049660| ISBN 9780691172262 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780691172255 (hardcover : acid-free paper) Classification: LCC PS3568.I8292 A6 2017 | DDC 811/.54--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049660 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond Pro and ScalaSansOT Printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SEPT. 3RD AFTER JACQUES ROUBAUD she likes to write her sonnets on La Salle Street where the saw keeps her company and her words on this great city stage are nothing concrete just a door that swings open wings flap the birds eat her sandwich in Central Park very near the Delacorte where the play is Midsummer though its no longer June light now disappears on the crowd who eat and drink by the river all disappear afterward south to Times Square where living means the glare/dare of the night shift like the poets and their stupendous affair with St. 5TH When a man is asked to sing of his anger the risk is that without remorse virtue dies War then is in the face, in this homelessness, the despair which couldnt wait couldnt ask for We dont talk to each other anymore we email global reach managed minutes morning to noon in the hospitals we are all old forbidden to talk of lost sons, asked to smile Enough, theyll hear the news, men in photographs die and nothing will seem simple, their faces especially where sorrow stretched everything Maps point to? and defeat looms where? out there where? Here the naked body is where terror lies Guilt builds monuments, the way we spend our time AUG. 8 TH FOR THOMAS HARDY (REVISED JUNE 5TH) If we say its all up to chance do we mean a throw of dice or an unexpected risk? Can we bear being battered with sorrow, joy? Contingent one moment on calamitous headlines, another by the fear of our death Obliterated by confrontationJobs test? And if Un coup de ds then Mallarms le hasard sits at a piano in a room Nothing but crass casualty obstacles these obstructions that cover the rising of light in the Eastthe painters eye tailored by light shares with us a gladness for color and sun We need new angles from which to see look out the window, there in the garden the gamble AUG. 9TH WAITRESS The uniform the stockings the waiting, time to carry the tray balanced for the banquet Maroon and pink polyester with black shoes Cygne or swan rushing across the ballroom floor The pigeon place where the assembled come to pick at steaks, filet mignon, ten per table, swallowed between dances bold sweep of it or left behind in the trash where no one can dine Avenue block ballroom I crash into space myself nothing a figure crossing the room emptied of person and picking up glasses The servers all speak different languages Not there to sing with a lyre but to pour drinks until the clock strikes midnight and we disperse STARTED AUG. 11TH (FINISHED FEB. 20TH) Being there one is struck by the difference that an ocean makesthe park advertises How it used to be charges admission sells Nostalgia and History to the tourist Le passants aim is to complicate a view To fulfill this pleasure a guide explicates the art of falconry; its role in Britain The family returns to the car, the hotel, the next meal, finished with that site, surrounded by a thin remembrance of a falcons stare A family en route revealed, translating signage, instructions, the way we used to be Struck by the absence of accompaniment and what one can say in another country AUG. 12TH WITH WORDSWORTH What a surprise the fresh breeze, noticing it Golden euphoria and wham! a strong wind ever ready behind small experience Words will latch on to air if you let them grab burrow their way stick have you think you are it Eenie meenie miney moe and the sweat drips the shirt clings to memory clings years ago And when you least expect it it all comes back Im at a window elated by the sky the moment where lights branched out and I was small A day where fireworks competed with lightning We in the big city in our huge smallness rushing in out of the bodega for beer and chips cigarettes and real celebration AUG. 13TH The mind gets overfull on certain mornings Maybe thats the way of the scribe to forage and scour (note that trying to protect oneself from language makes for a longing to comply with wind-blown anger, impossible of course) An aunts stern eye turns into tugs in the mind You can look up, instantly feel your wrongness, how the fear of lost fondness undoes the mind Hours elapsed, days, years, no breeze in the heat Children then grew fearful of shadows and dark Adults feel their passel memories heat cheeks, by the fall of a shadow across the ground The pollution tolerant Lindens and Oaks witness our delusion, we work in the dark AUG. 14TH The form carries a one-way conversation, site of separation brought into relief A relationship between sonnet and house the I that tried to run away, walls of snow, and how invisible the girl felt, small, bold Wordsworth would never scorn the form, his ground O it would take me years to kowtow to this earth quake and still resist the good loam, the concrete world, think of mans enlightenment, follow paths of beauty of sound of ideas and then dreams The struggle for a way out, a faith in this, through the house, past deaf-ears, into the snow filled One forgets that the form is, a lamp transports Oh the cold has clearly entered the sonnet AUG. 15TH FOR WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

To have the kind of _______ that no one can That will not hurt ____ even the smallest thing I saw a fly, now _______ circle around leaves That will not judge or cradle the cold or _____	presence not gnats turn
The self in this has no grace, ____ gratitude, thinks boredom the barrier when its _____ gold, energizes _______ jumps hoops just for grace, if sweet _______ our fellow gardenias and herbs	no pure matter gives
We think of things as ______, correction The sweet can fester instead _____ the human When divided its _____ surface that rankles with pain at the gate of self and its ________	reflection of the structures
Poet remind me its more _____ than need She crosses her legs circled around the ____	subtle leaves

AUG. 16TH Seeped in a nineteenth century piety I see how I forgot to strip them the sounds molded by my fathers Eliot records I see your method sticks to spoken language cannot face or gauge every word in my head I would stumble against the choir the grand voice the sloppiness that I would be punished for At eleven we dont think of what words say In the twenty first century I desire form that pushes the limits of silty thought the long and flexible so I can surprise your privacy (I almost wrote piracy), describe your spine curving slightly as I bend back the pages, his soft freckled hand on mine AUG. 18 TH (VERSION 2) He came out of the sea to greet mere mortals Poseidon of the Mediterranean The man I admired had no permanence, he would always go back to where he came from so the children thought when the world was color Theres a picture of the God in his swimsuit hair floating, in profile, ready to surface, but the past and the wet red rage container saw the sea lion move from place to place, un tethered and the children watched his sheen rub off in a dark apartment his sea charm broken tethered to responsibilities bursting with rage, smashed a catsup bottle into bits as the worlds color changed into black & white AUG. 19TH This year tangled up in last year transported The mistake that we make of time occurring, future fast-forwarding never quite finding Ladybugs all we can ask of the living, and of sonnets, when they get claustrophobic Always have to have a very high idea of what we do, how we end up being time Do we tell others what or do we write words This year lived in expectations nothing I could wear and the past has a way of catching Summer sky can be very blue the day cold, picked up mistakes one by one, can you blame me There were no rules, no regulations, nothing, no wonder I felt trapped by the lack of them AUG. 20TH Inasmuch as you let materials mask a thought attaches and words adhere to you, merry-go-round of constructions and of noise Is knowledge of the phone ringing essential specially when the view draws your eyes forward Stein tried to show the mystery of pattern short scenes with titles (big words we learn later) I was attacked from all sides worrying about what was said, in me those slabs with words on them Masking tape exposure, scissors, stones, paper Basically my error was in holding back and judging when I was in the thick of it like looking at a filmstrip splicing takes place At a cellular level everything linked AUG. 21ST I penetrated the narrative, had to engage the pigment of the perpetrator No quick confession here just the taking on of various elements, showing the world steps Because I cant separate myself from them because we are here, now, my siblings, my self How a tale is perceived by a child of nine, how brute force is perceived by an audience, how revenge is never an option because pierce that world and pleasure escapes, totally Clearly the idea of fairness was a sham The failure of not being able to see and most blindness turns to imitation not being, the real fiction needs an audience AUG. 22ND Absent again from all that really matters The pendulum swings back and forth from a branch memory of being proud of the father swinging from a rope the child admiring him Depend on the clock to keep you hanging there On the bus a few were left behind tick tock Sit cross-legged, try to breathe, that was the talk that introduced the teenager to the way, the deserted path up and down from the beach The instruction was to just do it as if a piece of meat sitting there at the table Annoyed by everything, wore black, erupted, she painted herself in shades of vermilion From lava to slag the answer is tick tock AUG. 23RD FOR COLERIDGE Always at work even when we dont work our nature stirring the pages that appear air winter words, worries and the same appetite for pushing the smile away wearing our spiel a similar sort of indolence I know but making assumes, hopes, clarity will come And what if what we do is afflicted with the real world reflecting back a lack, grim news, a place that gains nothing from Job-like efforts? Even without hope we must still bide our time, wait as the bloom waits for sunshine this chance to indulge in giving what we do, we must work without hope and traipse in the woods, this too is necessary, not indolent, for nectar AUG. 26TH FOR INGER CHRISTENSEN To allow them to keep coming, to want to remember the lavender rosemary thyme in the hills, in the salt, tasting the thick heat Here the scent of the Mediterranean Childhoods playground of dirt and heat, a spider blocks the path, black and yellow stripes, eye level In that moment a butterfly fluttering Children listen, wait for the ride to the beach Heat heavy, dont step on the ants, be careful The car burns the family and all complain Memories blend spent midday by the warm sea Theyll clamor out of the car and buy Fanta All memories are seas and words thicken them, cornstarch for the brain, country bread for body, dont drown in the grip of loss, float, use your fan AUG. 27TH gets lost in identification with loss the surface so tense that it breaks the body Cough, choke, faint, fall, then all the talk around it You peeled the orange in a spiral and laughed Brittle words, the same old story, the meanness, you laughed at my expense and I took it in bring me a blue coat to blanket and clear doubt In the fields bleeding hearts flower in the spring The spiral, the scent, is now no longer here but emotions make museums of our thoughts We are caught in between, in the crevice, in a cardboard box, dead in a box, or Alive The city crocuses were ready, eager Your secret crap was buried between the cracks AUG. 28TH The deeper one goes, the greater the surface gleaned now that destruction of architecture, of fragments, of traces, of the sun, the day, and the rays that reflect the color of things Violence and its values shatter a place Newsflash and its follow-up not a site to linger in flabbergasted as they are by the bilingual gasped in a cycle of loss In the manicured foot a callous has grown The hardened childlike rhythm part of the plan where the references are already anchored On the promenade or from a great height our pale thoughts intent on deciphering our end The clean smell of grass after a long downpour AUG. 29TH The saw the hammer and the worry again Stayed up late to listen to the candidate Kick the leg up and then hit it with both hands She doubled her efforts without making it What goes on outside the body essential The subways here, hurry to your destruction The doctor told the woman not to worry No cause yet I couldnt understand the rest Sandals and the movement of the feet in them The man on the high wire walked back and forth Smiled when seeing revealed the unexpected Had requested a thing without naming it The tai chi teacher spoke in Chinese and kicked She expected something more from her father AUG. 31ST What does it mean the poem unfamiliar? What about the new they ask what is the new Rimbaud frozen in the desert some ate him Its a ping-pong game of familiar patterns We need intimations of ______ (plug in the word) To take advantage of other routes today A birch tree in winter illuminated By sunlight I mean taking advantage of Childish things without meaning Id vote for them He who wants to listen grows polyphonic In strange ways this is the time to hold the door The drama of the aural is in our mouth Day after day we insist on this speaking Meaning wideris that the self the ear hears? SEPT. 1ST What is certain when many thoughtsNext page