Mullen - Dark Archive

Dark Archive LAURA MULLEN

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu . University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. p. cm. (New California poetry ; 32) ISBN 978-0-520-26886-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Title. Title.

PS3563.U3955D37 2011 811'.54dc22 2010032588 Manufactured in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). for Carol Snow The wind seized our breath. The Lake was rough. DOROTHY WORDSWORTH: JOURNALS, APRIL 15TH, 1802

Thanks to the editors of the following journals, in which some of these poems previously appeared: American Letters and Commentary, Caffeine Destiny, The Colorado Review, The Corpse, Barrow Street, Bayou, Bomb, The Denver Quarterly, Free Verse, Mandorla, Marginalia, MiPoesis, New American Writing, 1913, Octopus, Ping Pong, Upstairs at Duroc, and Van Goghs Ear. Also to Victoria Brockmeiers dove | tail press for the chapbook Turn and to Douglas Messerli for including Passages in the Project for Innovative Poetry, as well as to Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg for the appearance of Daisies in the anthology Starting Today. An alternate version of Evaporation... and some of the takes on Wordsworths poem appeared in Ill Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press).

I am very grateful to the Louisiana Board of Regents (through the Board of Regents Support Fund) for the ATLAS grant (LEQSF[2006-07]-RD-ATL-07) that gave me time to work on this book.

this light that looks like lightning outside is inside sputtering dance of tattered flame in a draft between doors knot of wick softening wall of wax its not that I dont understand why you had to be taken from us but any act of understanding turns back halted at reflecting glass to my need for meaning in this life clouds in a window scud by seemingly flashing dark and bright guttering sky my brief vision of the worlds that with you go out the light drowned in its own fuel a little smoke this glaucous spill of cooling wax wisps of almost opaque air blown past Wandered lonely in the voice of another who had no voice This is what I remember Two figures by the waters edge, stopped by such beauty, one numbers The complaints travel the body stop nowhere never stop are always Later by an open window notebook open This is what I remember... Who had no voice she said, still, but I wonder how you are I wandered like like refusing the information I wandered, realizing I hadnt mourned, and that I would still In the space between words begin Attempt In the space At dawn the newly risen dead uncomfortable In their restored bodies Situation: from wandering to rest Loneliness to solitude. Believing Is seeing, experience An accrual of images The newly risen dead find their bodies Uncooperative, awkward, ugly as in any Horror flick I wandered lonely as a van full of hippies In Texas In the space between words roots what shall I talk about Situation: a man at his desk pages through Anothers writing closes his eyes seeks rhymes For the following: daffodils, thought... I fear I can no longer think I fear I am no longer that which thinks Or that a certain kind of thinkings lost Light, light, light, light. Let there be a place From which a way seems clear or clearer Out of the house into the golden And never signs gone streetlights people lines between inside and out destroyed in the flood the word destroy with troy in it letters of a word lonely meaning stopped starts sounds the decision to use a frame of time to inhabit it habit like going to the wall where the mirror was expecting to see yourself seeing the wall (if thats all) recalled lines between house and yard yard and street lost my house your house his her their our high green weeds surround an isolated concrete stoop in whats left remember membrane this blurred view through swaying cut plastic makes a room within the stripped room containing dust promising to continue but this respirator she was holding it out theres something wrong with it That floated oer my couch, remote In one hand, drink in the other, as a crowd On the screen (frightened, enraged) Fled the tanks beneath the leaves Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine, These wars, these displaced refugees, Filmed in never-ending lines Along the margins and at bay. Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Hurrying nowhere, like worried ants. The waves beside them danced; but they Bent weeping over loved bodies: A poet could not but be gay, Far from such desperate company: I gazedand gazedbut little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that satellite dish Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, To channel surf the worlds ills.

Dead the author is a closed Account occluding you Clued in or out another One and only clouding Ground as stony as an autre Clod the authors nothing But another method Aloud to be allowed ssssh he Billows up wherever we Might see too many meanings Crowding round about a shroud Is not afraid of making a sound The author is not lonely as a cad As arias the areas of air we are arise To spin within convention Centers centers cannot hold The hell of whole untolled And where an urgent surge Of suggestion floods the subject With reflections sssssh he is still Turning the town upside down Adrift in the riffs these rifts Allow so if a reader running Aground on the drowned sounds A thunder or dunderhead under Stand my numbered superfund Friends its only an end to an end Where a mind wanders the authors Already in his head a recollected Glance back over a salts shoulder Where chances a roof to dance On the golden waves of the wake Of departure the other Are a crowd Not disappeared just disavowed In case you wondered Far as the local authorities let me On the tightly lashed leash Of this look and leave Policy; lonelyAs a clown... The necessity or so it seems of forcing A shape on these of saying like Of saying see what I see see What I ask you to see Seeing How far youll go with or on what grounds we Already that shape is dissolving Already that shape Already another very like a wail Seeing How far we might Impose a particular vision on what actually clear lifted curve of syllable churning back down into sound sounding It out is it like Meaning are you like Do you like me at once everything goes false with the speed of the flash revealing weve been at the beautiful and brilliant party eating maggots among the rotting corpses laughingNext page