Meitner - Ideal Cities: Poems

The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation, Stephen Graham, the Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation, Glenn & Renee Schaeffer, and the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation. 2009 Competition Winners Julie Carr of Denver, Colorado, SarahOf Fragments and Lines Chosen by Eileen Myles, to be published by Coffee House Press Colin Cheney of Brooklyn, New York, Here Be Monsters Chosen by David Wojahn, to be published by University of Georgia Press Carrie Fountain of Austin, Texas, Burn Lake Chosen by Natasha Trethewey, to be published by Penguin Books Erika Meitner of Blacksburg, Virginia, Ideal Cities Chosen by Paul Guest, to be published by HarperCollins Publishers Jena Osman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Network Chosen by Prageeta Sharma, to be published by Fence Books for Steve and Oz and for Frances Zimmerman, Z"L (19132008) The new monuments are made of artificial materials, plastic, chrome, and electric light. Robert Smithson, Entropy and the New Monuments (1966)
I am a wall and my breasts are towers. But for my lover I am a city of peace. The Song of Songs: A New Translation
(translated by Ariel and Chana Bloch) Contents Part One
Rental Towns My heart is an Alaskan fishing village during whaling season, which is to say that everyone is down by the thawing sea.

The huts on stilts are empty, and my heart is a harpoon, a homemade velveteen parka, hood lined with wolverine. My mouth has no zipper, which helps me remember how to say O. O I miss home. When I close my eyes, I see the F trains twin headlights blooming into the station. When I close my eyes, its warm wind sweeps hair from my face, the way my grandmother did with her hands, to see my eyes. Home is the place with plastic slipcovers on the couch.

Home is the place with heavy brown shoes misaligned at the door. When I close my eyes, I look for an entryway into the earth. I dream of a porcupine, though I cant recall if Ive ever seen one. I dream of my dead friend, who has no voice, but tells me to slow down. We walk together to the neighborhood bar. It is summer.

It is night. I have no choice. In my dream, my dead friend gives me a fish. I roll it up like a newspaper. I put a toothpick in it and we walk slowly to Brooklyn. My words dont mean anything, because right now my son is coughing in another room.

I can hear him through the walls. He sits up in his crib and waits for me. The world is a hollow white door; when I close my eyes, it spins like a dime on tile. It spins like something gentle knocked off a table. One day, my heart will ascend from the subway tunnel. It will burst into sunlight past the Court Street Station.

My heart is a chainsaw, an awl boring through leather. My heart is old-school graffiti a tag that zigs on metal, gets applause when it pulls into the station its that uplifting. Some days the world is too lonely. My heart wants to play chess with another heart inside my body. The windows on the soon-to-be luxury condos across the way say things to the darkness I cant hear. Sometimes theyre blocked by the train masticating its way across town.

Now and then I can interpret their blank banter, reminiscent of that ribbon gymnastics no one ever watches during the Olympics. They gracefully signal about our frugality (fragility), a howling yard dog (not ours) and the rain like a strange barrage of so many shot marbles. The bullets we thought were firecrackers turned out to be bullets. I take the trash out vinyl nights crippled with fear that thumps home from work at 3 a.m. We finally decide to take a break after the well-meaning Block Association gives out rolls of clear trash bags in the hopes wed pick up after the dealers and delinquents who chuck Sprite bottles from car windows or drop chicken boxes at the curb. Yes, well ride off and leave the neighbors voice through the floor, rusty, molten, like pouring pennies in a jar (that metallic taste, that exact heaviness).

You didnt specify how long wed abandon those tiny teacups, closet of hats, the meat grinder attached to the side of the counter. Wed be safe while someone else inherited our condiments. But the rest stops would be anonymous, highway industrial and rutted. Id have to learn new ways to eavesdrop on the neighbors, on the rain, on uson the same night lined with an old bath mat that stretches everywhere. We spackle small wall-holes with toothpaste and apprehension, erase all visible traces, though were still as obvious as my student who plays the ukulele and is no longer my student; he sent me a broken-heart poem after his girlfriend dumped him which used broken things as similes for his heart. For now , she said in his poem thats how long they were apart.

I translate stories at the McDonalds, second floor: Portrait of a Bus Line. What Makes People Laugh. There is one about a psychological experiment that starts, The crowd entered the concert hall. Everyone took their seats. There is not one person who didnt take their seat. The bathroom here is clean and I am waiting for my tutor who is late and the McDonalds pretends its a river, looks out on an office building covered in silver, a sculpture that simulates a wall of undulating water.

The cashiers of my pregnancy have been telling me everything crucial: today Tina said to bring a real pillow to the hospital to avoid their vinyl and gave me a free milkshake with my McChicken. I am cumbersome and forget my own girth, though in my winter coat I blend with everyone else while I translate dumbed down newspaper stories and truncated fables from Hebrew to English: one on how babies learn language, and another about a poor man who finds a coin on Shabbat that hes not allowed to pick up. Even the metro donned a disguise to avoid the story of the astronaut in love who drives miles in diapers. On the way here, on the Orange line, Syria with his gold-trimmed leather Bible told Desiree about Jesus and a Chinese man got on for one stop to sing Silent Night. The Rosslyn station is a long way up. I am pregnant and the world is too noisy.

Eventually the sky will open and someone will gaze down on the earth. The metro is hushed, covered in salt, honeycombed in cement. I pretend I am Sputnik, unmanned, viable, perfectly round and hiccuping. Orbiting. I would like to pass this exam. I have two hearts, and the second one beats faster.

I can hear it weekly on a Doppler scope on the left side more strongly though we need to make mute things the world is too noisy the faster the heart the more I can translate the noise of the train and the doors opening then everyone took their seats and so did we. When they hired me via phone I drove my Honda cross-country
and moved into a cottage off Highway 1 that belonged
to a minimalist anthropologist on sabbatical: television set hidden
in the closet, chairs made of driftwood, no chemicals allowed
for cleaning but vinegar and sea salt. I kept expecting to wake up
somewhere less bizarre and gorgeous, but I was in Santa Cruz:
dreadlocked ten-year-olds riding bicycles while balancing
surfboards under one arm, lemon trees in the yard, the Pacific
rolling along cliffs like a glossy vacation postcard
sent from the place where even God retires. My cottage was tucked behind a stretch of all-night falafel joints,
and drive-thru espresso huts. The butchers at Esperanza Market
grilled skewered chickens on poles in metal half-barrels
stationed on the sidewalk like mini-tanks, smoke drifting
in my window Saturdays, making me so hungry Id walk right past
the health food store, its sign engineered by anarchist employees
as a weekly font of motivation: Subvert the Dominant Paradigm
above VitaPro SaleEntire Line $6.99! I didnt know anyone
in town then, and on days when I wasnt teaching, cashiers