Lewis - Space Struck

SPACE
STRUCK SPACE STRUCK PAIGE LEWIS Copyright 2019 by Paige Lewis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lewis, Paige, 1991 author. Title: Space struck : poems / Paige Lewis. Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019006381 (print) | LCCN 2019009647 (e-book) ISBN 9781946448453 (e-book) | ISBN 9781946448446 (pbk. : acid-free paper) Classification: LCC PS3612.E973 (e-book) | LCC PS3612.E973 A6 2019 (print) DDC 811/.6dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006381 Cover image Joachim Bandau Untitled, 2006 watercolour on paper 30 x 22.5 inches Courtesy of the artist and Nicholas Metivier Gallery Cover and interior design by Alban Fischer. Manufactured in Canada. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. for Kaveh So while they journeyed up that sloping road, the Sibyl told her story to Aeneas; they exited the underworld at Cumae, and there Aeneas offered customary sacrifices, then landed on the shore that, as yet, did not bear his nurses name. OVID, Metamorphoses, Book XIV I hear eternity Is self-forgetting. LYNN XU, Earth Light: I CONTENTS . , . .

I NORMAL EVERYDAY
CREATURES Im going to show you some photos extreme close-ups of normal, everyday creatures. A patch of gray fur, half a yellow eye. When you guess each creature right, you guess each creature into being. Soon youll have enough to open a zoo, and people will visit because its not every day they get to see everyday creatures in cages. Oh, of course your zoo will have cages! Otherwise youve just got world around you and whos going to pay for that? Your father? Actually, lets not talk about fathers, they are boring and offer clumsy advice on toothpick drawbridges, on soothing saw grass wounds, on wearing the same pair of underwear four days straight like the Boy Scouts. I was never a Boy Scout, though I did dream of pinewood derbies and being afraid of the forest.

I might ask you one day to go camping, and if you have the desire to dance. Please, when we finish spinning, aim me toward the river. Once, while jumping from stone to stone, I slipped into the river and scared a snake from his underwater hiding place, and though he did not wisp his tongue at me, though he made no rude remarks about my bony feet or the house I was raised in, I wanted to harm him. I was frightened I thought I knew where everything belonged. I do know the snake does not belong in these photos. It is not an everyday creature.

I can tell you this because this is my gameIm allowed to give hints. And if, for some reason, you dont belong in this space with me, getting fingerprints all over my glossy animals, then well journey until we find the world in which we both fit. And when the path grows too dark to see even the bright parts of me, have faith in the sound of my voice. Im here. Im still the one leading. ON THE TRAIN, A MAN
SNATCHES MY BOOK On the train, a man snatches my book, reads the last line, and says, I completely get you, youre not that complex.

He could be rightlately all my what ifs are about breath: What if a glassblower inhales at the wrong moment? What if Im drifting on a sailboat and the wind stops? If hed ask me how Im feeling, Id give him the long versionI feel as if Im on the moon listening to the air hiss out of my spacesuit, and I cant find the hole. Im the vice president of panic, and the president is missing. Most nights, I calm myself by listing animals still on the Least Concern end of the extinction spectrum: aardvarks and blackbirds are fine. Minnows thrivethough this brings me no reliefthey can swim through sludge if they have to. I dont think Ive ever written the word doom, but nothing else fits. NO ONE CARES UNTIL YOURE
THE LAST OF SOMETHING Someone squealed about the ivory-billed woodpecker nesting on my back porch, and now theres a line of binoculared men holding buckets of mealworms and pushing their way into my home. NO ONE CARES UNTIL YOURE
THE LAST OF SOMETHING Someone squealed about the ivory-billed woodpecker nesting on my back porch, and now theres a line of binoculared men holding buckets of mealworms and pushing their way into my home.

I let them in because Id rather be host than hostage and really, how could these lovers of redheaded grub-slurpers be bad? They sport such splendid hiking shorts. They press their noses against my sliding glass door and ask for the woodpeckers name. I didnt give him oneworried that if I named him, hed never leave, and honestly, I havent been a fan since I watched him raid a blue jays nest for breakfast. Well, I didnt fully watchmost of what I see, I see through the gaps in my fingers. This sort of looking has turned me boringeven the suns been sighing, Not you again, when it sees me. And Im sure theres an alternate universe where my gaze is unwavering, where Im paid to name the newest nail polish colorsFiddlehead Green, Feral Red, Geothermal Glitterwhere I dont hate documentarians for letting nature be its gruesome self.

But Im stuck in this one, listening to the demands of birdwatchersthey want postcards and T-shirts, they want me to build an avian-themed carousel in the middle of my living room. I want them to leave. At midnight, I turn off the porch light, and they swear they can still see inside his nest. Someone asks, Doesnt he look happy?Yes, they all agree. Dont you think he sounds like Fred Astairewith his tap-tap-tapping?Of course! Dresses like him, too. I dont know if its the hunger, the heat, or the hours of not blinking that turns them cultish, but I go with it.

I ask, Shouldnt he have a break from your surveillance? They nod. Yes, a break! Im giddy at the thought of being alone. I say, Its time to go home and rest. They remove their shoes and lie down on countertops, in closets, and underneath my staircase. Wherever theres space, they fill itbody against tired body pressed close as feathers. SACCADIC
MASKINGa phenomenon where the brain blocks out blurred images created by movement of the eye All constellations are organisms and all organisms are divine and unfixed.

I am spending my night in the kitchen. There is blood in the batterdark strands stretch like vocal cords telling me I am missing so much with these blurred visions: a syringe flick, the tremor of my wristraised veins silked green. I have seen the wings of a purple finch wavering around its body, stuck, burned to the grill of my car, which means I have failed to notice its flight a lesson on infinities, a lesson I am trying to learn. I am trying. Tell me, how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion? THE FOXES
ARE BACK So this is water without your mouth-oil ghosting the surface. How much must I swallow before I can say that the foxes are back, possessing our forest, asking, Where are your fruits? And since you brought me the word paradise, I assume they mean you.

What else can I offer? That thing about boiling frogs isnt true they know what rising heat means and they will jump out. All my pots are empty. Can you see the shroud of hunger, the crease between my chest that says,