Harvey - Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form

PITY THE BATHTUB ITS FORCED EMBRACE OF THE HUMAN FORM 2016 by Matthea Harvey All rights reserved Alice James Books are published by Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc., an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington. Alice James Books 114 Prescott Street Farmington, ME 04938 www.alicejamesbooks.org eISBN: 978-1-938584-58-9 N OTE TO THE R EADER Alice James Books encourages you to calibrate your e-reader device settings using the line of characters below as a guide, which optimizes the line length and character size: to them this is the most important moment of the week listening to her Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. Doing this will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accomodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems may be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the line break will be marked with a shallow indent. A CKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the editors of the following magazines where these poems first appeared: Atlanta Review: The Illuminated Manuscript, The Need For Consistency Boston Review: Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, By Bicycle Colorado Review: Image Cast By a Body Intercepting Light Denver Quarterly: Nude on a Horsehair Sofa by the Sea Fence: The- Gem is on Page Sixty-Four, How All Things Vestigial Gained Prestige Grand Street: Translation Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies: Self-Portraits Lit: In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden New England Review: The Festival of Giovedi Grasso The New Republic: Objective Fatigue The North American Review: Outside the Russian-Turkish Baths The Paris Review: Thermae Prairie Schooner: Frederick Courteney Selouss Letters to His Love Seneca Review: Letting Go The Southern Review: The Oboe Player, This Holds Water Volt: Paint Your Steps Blue Verse: One Filament Against the Firmament Thank you to Alfred A.

Knopf, a Division of Random House, Inc. for permission to reprint from The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. Many many thanks to my family, friends and teachers. In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden is for Brian. Napoleons Gardens is for Margarete and David. More Sketches for a Beautiful Hat is for Frances.

The Gem Is on Page Sixty-Four is for Sasha. Table of Contents

Ordinarily, we look at something, and our gaze is like a fine wire or a taut thread with two supports one being the eye and the other what it sees, and theres some such great support structure for every second that passes; but at this particular second, on the contrary, it is rather as though something painfully sweet were pulling our eye-beams apart. Robert Musil, from The Man Without Qualities T RANSLATION They see a bird that is bright in both beak and feather And call it cardinal not thinking to import the human Kind words welcome those who stumble to shore With the tilt of the sea still in their step salt stains At their hems that seem to map out coastlines left far Behind the new songs are the old absurd hopes A woman wiping the table sings bring me plansAnd money or fans and honey each word more Strange yellow flowers spring up in the first lawns Instead of white dots of daisies how to tell what is A weed is persistent and is to be emulated says a man In a tavern in church the preacher lectures on Lazarus Gesturing wildly as another boatload lurches along A latitude is a guiding line a platitude a boring line Chorus the children in school their slates scrawled And smudged with sums that always seem to come to Nothing is quite the same here a woman writes a letter Near the lighthouse but the fog is so thick the words Run as she writes them for a moment she cant tell The sea spray from the fog one falls back the other stays Suspended between two houses in the distance is a Clothesline with a red shirt on it but she sees a bird I P ITY THE B ATHTUB I TS F ORCED E MBRACE OF THE H UMAN F ORM l. Pity the bathtub that belongs to the queen its feet Are bronze casts of the former queens feet its sheen A sign of fretting is that an inferior stone shows through Where the marble is worn away with industrious Polishing the tub does not take long it is tiny some say Because the queen does not want room for splashing The maid thinks otherwise she knows the king Does not grip the queen nightly in his arms there are Others the queen does not have lovers she obeys Her mother once told her your ancestry is your onlySupport then is what she gets in the bathtub she floats Never holds her nose and goes under not because She might sink but because she knows to keep her ears Above water she smiles at the circle of courtiers below Her feet are kicking against walls which cannot give Satisfaction at best is to manage to stay clean Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the whims of One man loves but is not loved in return by the object Of his affection there is little to tell of his profession There is more for it is because he works with glass That he thinks things are clear (he loves) and adjustable (she does not love) he knows how to take something Small and hard and hot and make room for His breath quickens at night as he dreams of her he wants To create a present unlike any other and because he cannot Hold her he designs something that can a bathtub of Glass shimmers red when it is hot he pours it into the mold In a rush of passion only as it begins to cool does it reflect His foolishness enrages him he throws off his clothes meaning To jump in and lie there but it is still too hot and his feet propel Him forward he runs from one end to the other then falls To the floor blisters begin to swell on his soft feet he watches His pain harden into a pretty pattern on the bottom of the bath Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human Form may define external appearance but there is room For improvement within try a soap dish that allows for Slippage is inevitable as is difference in the size of The subject may hoard his or her bubbles at different Ends of the bathtub may grasp the sponge tightly or Loosely it may be assumed that eventually everyone gets in The bath has a place in our lives and our place is Within it we have control of how much hot how much cold What to pour in how long we want to stay when to Return is inevitable because we need something To define ourselves against even if we know that Whenever we want we can pull the plug and get out Which is not the case with our own tighter confinement Inside the body oh pity the bathtub but pity us too N UDE ON A H ORSEHAIR S OFA BY THE S EA I dont know what to do with his body. It looks smooth & heavy too from the way the sofas mahogany claws sink into the sand. Every other wave is brown, the ones in between a light liquor bottle green, & the strip of wet sand the froth laps, then leaves, is glass brown & shouldnt act like mud but does.

When a seagull struts by I see the others flick their brushes in irritation over that spot as if to drive it away & me, Im avoiding the subject, still fretting over how to paint the word