Rebecca Dunham - Cold Pastoral

ALSO BY REBECCA DUNHAMThe Flight CageThe Miniature RoomGlass Armonica 2017, Text by Rebecca Dunham All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415. (800) 520-6455 www.milkweed.org Published 2017 by Milkweed Editions Printed in the United States of America Cover design by Gretchen Achilles Cover photo by Carrie Vonderhaar / Ocean Futures Society / National Geographic Creative Author photo by Amanda Crim / Second Nature Photography 17 18 19 20 21 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Jerome Foundation; the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit www.milkweed.org. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dunham, Rebecca, 1973- author.

Title: Cold pastoral : poems / Rebecca Dunham. Description: Minneapolis : Milkweed Editions, 2017. Identifiers: LCCN 2016029440 (print) | LCCN 2016037781 (ebook) | ISBN 9781571314789 (softcover) | ISBN 9781571319395 (e-book) Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / American / General. Classification: LCC PS3604.U54 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3604.U54 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029440 Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. Cold Pastoral was printed on acid-free 30% postconsumer-waste paper by Versa Press. Cold Pastoral was printed on acid-free 30% postconsumer-waste paper by Versa Press.

Table of Contents

MNEMOSYNE TO THE POET For you, memory is but an oil lamp to snuff, left to smoke. Diademed by earths velvet mantle. So easy for you to ignore: hadal press of sea, the open veins plumes, how they wheel like a maelstrom up and down. My sight spills through waves of old, blown glass. I am not permitted to turn, pillow to cheek, and wait for sleep to find me. ELEGY, WIND-WHIPPEDMay 23, 2011, Joplin, Missouri1. ELEGY, WIND-WHIPPEDMay 23, 2011, Joplin, Missouri1.

REFUSE Doll hairbrown yarn loops round a hickorys jagged limb and she dances the wind like a human body clinched above the gallows. Seeyour own eyes stitched open as hers there is no difference, batting or flesh, still you will hang, emptied by my breath. She could be dead. Easily she could be your daughter. 2. HAMPSHIRE TERRACE Search and mark with a spray painted X.

Nothing left to salvage. You do not like to say it, but you need the dogs. No tools you possess can help you find silence. Were always hopeful but we briefedthe guys to plan for the worst. Crowbar, chainsaw, chisel you dig, hail beating. In time, you think, please let me be in time.3. Incline. Incline.

To please, to like, to desire. To cut away in narrow strips, stave and plank, to shear. To lister: to furrow the landplow and drilldrop and cover. Who is the one that compiles? Roll clouds scroll the sky. Call it and we will listen: anything but there is no list, there is no list.4. CATECHISMWhat is the chief end of human life? Sirens like a trumpets call.

Roll the beds to the hall and pull the blindstoo late What reason have you for saying so? Burst rose of sharded light. IV lines ripped loose, beds thrown against the wall, blood-drenched What is the highest good of man? and bathed in life. And these are the lucky ones, the blessed who walk among our ruin. What is, what reason, what isthe good of man? The very same. Bathed in life, the burst rose. 5. 5.

BROKEN Stripped and strafedanother casualtytheir skeletons spear the sky. Shag-barked hickory, catalpa, a 135-ringed oak. Debris perches like turkey vultures on their arms. Each one, a splintered body to be hewn and dragged out of town, put to the pyre. They deserve this much, at least. 6. 6.

MUCORMYCOSIS puncture wound hard black center press let the pain remind you what it means to survive decay a petri dish leaf mold and wood what the skin admits all nature needs to destroy you Spore fr. spora sowing seed I will see your toll and raise you one hundred sixty-one 7. DOVECOTE windows blown-in and empty-socketed as a skull against the hospitals bone-slabbed concrete roost, thou forsaken absence is its own home ATAVISM AT TWILIGHT Lance and drain this ravened skyhat in hand we will Always return to you, prodigal. I swear we knew Not what we did. I swear. Land unscrubbed to rust, Gashed and barehells toothed pastoral.

No Excuses. Pitchfork my soul, millet on your scale, but Let not this harvest strip flesh from bones. Pray Unsheathe your sword and make of my heart a ragged tear. Salvage this earth, snarl grass and field. I will take it all. BLACK HORIZONGrand Isle, Louisiana, 2010Post-Deepwater Horizon oil spill Like ribbons of kelp, they wash up bark-black and stretching far as the eye can seeboys sway in the waves, skin sheened in oil as they toss the tar balls.

A quick game of pickup. On the shore, cleanup crews weave a path between beach towels, Hazmat-suited, shovel and plastic bag in hand. It never fails to shock: dark pools oiling sands of blinding white. I load my open palms with them, testing their heft. These scales cannot be balanced. IN WHICH SHE OPENS THE BOXCelia Steele in Delaware, 1923 Even as a child I hungered for them, fox in the henhouse, my mother said. IN WHICH SHE OPENS THE BOXCelia Steele in Delaware, 1923 Even as a child I hungered for them, fox in the henhouse, my mother said.