Gerstler - Medicine
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Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for complex yet accessible poetry that is by turns extravagant, subversive, surreal, and playful. In her new collection, Medicine, she deploys a variety of dramatic voices, spoken by such disparate characters as Cinderellas wicked sisters, the wife of a nineteenth-century naturalist, a homicide detective, and a woman who is happily married to a bear. Their elusive collectivity suggests, but never quite defines, the floating authorial presence that haunts them. Gerstlers abiding interests--in love and mourning, in science and pseudo-science, in the idea of an afterlife--are strongly evident in these new poems, which are full of strong emotion, language play, surprising twists, and a wicked sense of black humor. Read more...
Abstract: Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for complex yet accessible poetry that is by turns extravagant, subversive, surreal, and playful. In her new collection, Medicine, she deploys a variety of dramatic voices, spoken by such disparate characters as Cinderellas wicked sisters, the wife of a nineteenth-century naturalist, a homicide detective, and a woman who is happily married to a bear. Their elusive collectivity suggests, but never quite defines, the floating authorial presence that haunts them. Gerstlers abiding interests--in love and mourning, in science and pseudo-science, in the idea of an afterlife--are strongly evident in these new poems, which are full of strong emotion, language play, surprising twists, and a wicked sense of black humor
Abstract: Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for complex yet accessible poetry that is by turns extravagant, subversive, surreal, and playful. In her new collection, Medicine, she deploys a variety of dramatic voices, spoken by such disparate characters as Cinderellas wicked sisters, the wife of a nineteenth-century naturalist, a homicide detective, and a woman who is happily married to a bear. Their elusive collectivity suggests, but never quite defines, the floating authorial presence that haunts them. Gerstlers abiding interests--in love and mourning, in science and pseudo-science, in the idea of an afterlife--are strongly evident in these new poems, which are full of strong emotion, language play, surprising twists, and a wicked sense of black humor
Gerstler: author's other books
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Andrew Mangham
Doshi
Knox
Holmes John
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Alexie Sherman
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Table of Contents
Also by AMY GERSTLER
The True Bride
Primitive Man
Past Lives (with Alexis Smith)
Bitter Angel
Nerve Storm
Crown of Weeds
Primitive Man
Past Lives (with Alexis Smith)
Bitter Angel
Nerve Storm
Crown of Weeds
FOR MARCUS
He oft finds med cine who his griefe imparts.
Spenser
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following people have aided and abetted me in various ways and I would like to thank them:
Bernard Cooper, David Trinidad, Sid and Mimi Gerstler, Tina Gerstler, Tony Cohan, Dennis Cooper, Tom Knechtel, Jane Wein stock, Megan Williams, Judith Moore, Alexis Smith, Brian Tucker, David Stanford, Linda Young, Ira Silverberg, Maurya Simon, Eloise Klein Healy, Maura Stanton, Tom Clark, David Lehman, Paul Slovak, and most especially, Benjamin Weissman.
Poems in this manuscript first appeared in the following magazines, sometimes in slightly altered forms:
American Poetry Review, Art Commotion, Boston Review, Crania, Crazy Horse, Faultline, Fourteen Hills, Gas, Kenyon Review, The LA Weekly, Mike and Dales Younger Poets, Phoebe, Ploughshares, The Prose Poem, Purple, Quarterly West, Santa Monica Review, Snowflake, Verse, and The World.
A section of Lovesickness appeared in an artists book entitled Past Lives, a collaboration with Alexis Smith.
PRAYER FOR JACKSON
Dear Lord, fire-eating custodian of my soul,
author of hemaphrodites, radishes,
and Arizonas rosy sandstone,
please protect this wet-cheeked baby
from disabling griefs. Help him sense when
to rise to his feet and make his desires known,
and when to hit the proverbial dirt. On nights
it pleases thee to keep him sleepless, summon
crickets, frogs and your chorus of nocturnal
birds so he wont conclude the earths gone mute.
Make him astute as Egyptian labyrinths that keep
the deads privacy inviolate. Give him his mothers
swimming ability. Make him so charismatic
that even pigeons flirt with him, in their nervous,
avian way. Grant him the clearmindedness
of a midwife who never winces when tickled.
Let him be adventurous as a menu of ox tongue hash,
lemon rind wine and pinecone Jell-O. Fill him with awe:
for the seasons, minarets sawtoothed peaks,
the breathing of cathedrals, and all that lives
for one radiant day or sixty pitiful years.
Bravely, he has ventured among us, disguised
as a newcomer, shedding remarkably few tears.
author of hemaphrodites, radishes,
and Arizonas rosy sandstone,
please protect this wet-cheeked baby
from disabling griefs. Help him sense when
to rise to his feet and make his desires known,
and when to hit the proverbial dirt. On nights
it pleases thee to keep him sleepless, summon
crickets, frogs and your chorus of nocturnal
birds so he wont conclude the earths gone mute.
Make him astute as Egyptian labyrinths that keep
the deads privacy inviolate. Give him his mothers
swimming ability. Make him so charismatic
that even pigeons flirt with him, in their nervous,
avian way. Grant him the clearmindedness
of a midwife who never winces when tickled.
Let him be adventurous as a menu of ox tongue hash,
lemon rind wine and pinecone Jell-O. Fill him with awe:
for the seasons, minarets sawtoothed peaks,
the breathing of cathedrals, and all that lives
for one radiant day or sixty pitiful years.
Bravely, he has ventured among us, disguised
as a newcomer, shedding remarkably few tears.
TO A YOUNG WOMAN IN A COMA
You havent gulped down your allotted portion
of joy yet, so you must wake up. Recover,
and live to bear childrena girl and a boy
twins who kiss in the womb and fox trot
on your bladder shortly before theyre born.
Find your way back to us. Landmarks include
the lines on your mothers pierced earlobes,
jagged crags of your boyfriends chipped tooth.
Come up from the basement. Climb those damp
plank stairs and reenter the squinty glare
of consciousness. Grip the rickety handrail.
Go slowly, past jars streaked with mushroom
dust and enriched mud from the houses bowels.
Let your name be written in orange marmalade
across the breakfast table. Reel in your soul.
Tell it to float back, through the portals
of mouth and nose, into its flesh envelope,
so you may enjoy the privileges of being
flooded with pain, inhaling rank hospital
food fumes and seeing your familys patient,
inescapable faces, too beautiful for words.
Surface, even if it feels like youre crashing
through a plate glass window. Theres too much
left undone. We can still smell the out-of-doors
all over you: daffodil bulbs, rye bread
and cider. So wiggle your toes. Groan.
Open those gunky eyes. You need to grow older,
have those babies, try to describe what
the other side was like, go ice skating.
of joy yet, so you must wake up. Recover,
and live to bear childrena girl and a boy
twins who kiss in the womb and fox trot
on your bladder shortly before theyre born.
Find your way back to us. Landmarks include
the lines on your mothers pierced earlobes,
jagged crags of your boyfriends chipped tooth.
Come up from the basement. Climb those damp
plank stairs and reenter the squinty glare
of consciousness. Grip the rickety handrail.
Go slowly, past jars streaked with mushroom
dust and enriched mud from the houses bowels.
Let your name be written in orange marmalade
across the breakfast table. Reel in your soul.
Tell it to float back, through the portals
of mouth and nose, into its flesh envelope,
so you may enjoy the privileges of being
flooded with pain, inhaling rank hospital
food fumes and seeing your familys patient,
inescapable faces, too beautiful for words.
Surface, even if it feels like youre crashing
through a plate glass window. Theres too much
left undone. We can still smell the out-of-doors
all over you: daffodil bulbs, rye bread
and cider. So wiggle your toes. Groan.
Open those gunky eyes. You need to grow older,
have those babies, try to describe what
the other side was like, go ice skating.
NEARBY
When the spiritual axe fell, did you wake up inside The White Orchard, that snowy van Gogh we both admired? Are you lost in his chilly idyllic painting, under skies filled with white dots he smeared in with his thumbs? How dare you. How dare you die. Now you express an absolute restfulness. A sober way of existing, unlike mine. A shot of tequila gleams on the table. Its vinegarish drip gilds my innardsthats my report from the salt mine of the senses tonight. Youre supposed to be a ghost now, living on in shipwrecked tatters like a shredded sailboat sail; sans dirty linen, gritty winds, and the bane of shaving every day, which you hated. Once you began to lose your mind, you wisely refused to shave or be shaved. You put up surprisingly big fights, and I found myself glad to see you so vehemently defying your keepers, including me, as I chased you around with a red and white striped can of shaving cream. Not that you could run much by then. So. Youve had a fortnights silence. An autumnal lull. Sat out a break between quarters in the cosmic basketball game. Come back as a crawfish, a leek, a handful of gravel hens ingest to use as teeth, a fake preacher who cant control his wolfish streak. I dont care what you wear. But come back soon. Not seeking revenge or relief, to which youre mightily entitled, but to meet your new darkhaired niece and answer a few routine questions.
THE BEAR-BOY OF LITHUANIA
Girls, take my advice, marry an animal. A wooly one is most consoling. Find a fur man, born midwinter. Reared in the mountains. Fond of boxing. Make sure he has black rubbery lips, and a sticky sweet mouth. A winter sleeper. Pick one who likes to tussle, who clowns around the kitchen, juggles hot baked potatoes, gnaws playfully on a corner of your apron. Not one mocked by his lumbering instincts, or whos forever wrestling with himself, tainted with shame, itchy with chagrin, but a good-tempered beast who plunges in greedily, grinning and roaring. His backslapping manner makes him popular with the neighbors, till he digs up and eats their Dutch tulip bulbs. Then you see just how stuffy human beings can be. On Sundays his buddies come over to play watermelon football. When they finally get tired, they collapse on heaps of dried grass and leaves, scratching themselves elaborately, while I hand out big hunks of honeycomb. Theyve no problem swallowing dead bees stuck in the honey.
A bear-boy likes to stretch out on the floor and be roughly brushed with a broom. Never tease him about his small tail, which is much like a chipmunks. If you do, hell withdraw to the hollow of some tree, as my husband has done whenever offended since he first left the broad-leafed woodlands to live in this city, which is so difficult for him. Let him be happy in his own way: filling the bathtub with huckleberries, or packing dark, earthwormy dirt under the sofa. Dont mention the clawmarks on the refrigerator. (You know he cant retract them.) Nothing pleases him more than a violent change in climate, especially if it snows while hes asleep and he wakes to find the landscape blanketed. Then his teeth chatter with delight. He stamps and paws the air for joy. Exuberance is a bears inheritance. He likes northern light. Excuse me, please. His bellow summons me.
Let me start again. True, his speech is shaggy music. But by such gruff instruction, I come to know love. Its difficult to hear the story of his forest years with dry eyes. He always snuffs damply at my hand before kissing it. My fingers tingle at the thought of that sensitive, mobile nose. Youve no idea how long his tongue is. At night, I get into bed, pajama pockets full of walnuts. He rides me around the garden in the wheelbarrow now that Im getting heavy with his cubs. I hope our sons will be much like their father, but not suffer so much discomfort wearing shoes.
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