Hillman - Loose sugar

LOOSE SUGAR

WESLEYAN POETRY

Brenda Hillman

Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
1997 by Brenda Hillman
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5
CIP data appear at the end of the book
ISBN for the paperback edition: 978-0-8195-2243-6

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support
of the Lannan Foundation in the publication of this book.

Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative.
The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

For Ethan, Jesse, and Louisa

(blank)

LOOSE SUGAR

space

time

space-time:

The four-dimensional space
whose points are events.

Stephen Hawking

glossary for A Brief History of Time

And what you see outside of you
you see inside of you...

The Thunder: Perfect Mind

Nag Hammadi Library

Once you were immortal in the flame.
You were not the fire
but you were in the fire;

nothing moved except
the way it was already moving;
nothing spoke
except the voice in back of time;

and when you became your life,
there were those who couldnt,
those who tried to love you and failed
and some who had loved you in the beginning
with the first sexual energy of the world.

Start the memory now,
you who let your life be invented
though not being invented had been more available

and remember those
who lit the abyss. The boys in science fair.
You were probably hall monitor at that time werent you,
and you admired them;
on their generator, the spark bounced back and forth
like baby lightning
and you saw them run their fingertips
through its danger,
two promising loops stuck up to provide
a home for the sexual light
which was always loose when it wasnt broken,
free joy that didnt go anywhere
but moved between the wires
like a piece of living, in advance

then later: how much
were you supposed to share?

The boys sat in front of your house at dusk,
the ones who still had parents.
Sometimes they held Marlboros out the car
windows and even
if they didnt, sparks fell from their hands.
Showers of sparks
between nineteen sixty eight and the

hands were sleek
with asking sleek with asking;

they had those long intramural after
the library type fingers
they would later put in you,ah.
When? well,
when they had talked you into having a body
they could ask into the depths of

and they rose to meet you
against an ignorance that made you perfect
and you rose to meet them like a waitress of fire

because: didnt
the spark shine best in the bodies
under the mild shooting stars
on the back-and-forth blanket
from the fathers cars
they lay down with you, and when
did you start missing them.
As Sacramento missed its yellow dust 1852.
When did you start missing those
who invented your body with their sparks

they didnt mind being
plural. They put
their summer stars inside of you,

how nice to have. And then:
the pretty soon. Pretty
soon you were a body,
space, warm
flesh, warm
(this) under
the summer meteors that fell
like lower case is above
the cave of granite where the white owl slept

without because or why
that first evening of the world. The sparks
of your bodies joined the loud sparks of the sky

And you carried it, a little flame,
into almost famous cities,
between the ringing of shallow bells,
pretty much like some of that
blue tile work,
walking the bridge of sighs until you found the spark

on quilted bedspreads
in small villages, as if
the not-mattering stitching coming
all undone in the middle
stood for a decade. You barely
burned then;

sex grows rather dim sometimes
doesnt it but it comes back.
Yourself half-gone into those rooms, yourself, a stranger.

You who happened only once:
remember yourself as you are;

when he comes to you
in the revolving dusk,
his full self lighting candles, a little smoke
he sings, the fire
you already own so you can stop
not letting him;

all love is representative
of the beginning of time. When you are loved,
the darkness carries you.
When you are loved, you are golden

(thats good, you got there;
should you make it
part of the record?)

... a burning liquid that was called the original force of Nature

anonymous tenth-century alchemist

For some reason its likely to think of the insides of a thicket as a five-pointed liquid star.

A group of us, not knowing how to stand in nature, in the sixties; each breath sponsored by that.

Possible friends nearby smelled like hemp, white tortillas and twelve-oz. Coca-Colas; the fire in their fingers talked back, had feelings.

Locating consciousness, where would you say it is; it was the happiest moment in the first twenty years.

And, why do we seek to destroy it by changing?

mottled doves
garnets

Magic fought with the ideal, time curved the barren glow, and animals called from their nests at the center of the world.

I had been a child being guessed at by onyx, fresh from nothing. Dimensions pawn.

My brother okayed the ground with sticks; when something called, we answered it. With a drop or two more of that inherited chemical we would have been a schizophrenic.

Empty spines of sticks filled up with liquid fire; they had done this before, we just hadnt been quiet enough to mention it.

Making theories of creation is about repetition, though even the infinite happens just once.

XX sticks
cross-referencing
each other

Had intended to climb out a window, but intended is not what makes it happen. Delicious to climb out a window. The weather was not the windows fault.

Smears on chrome fenders like pet clouds between which they might see a body coming curved to them. Before the thicket your mouth stopped off at a boy.

Going back a little: nearing them was faster; that which owned the thicket also owned the flower.

Either tell the story or dont. Narrative is such an either/or situation, like a window, just as sex is a metaphor for not getting it.

You have changed the assignment to Swirl: voice from a thicket; surfaces meet where you live into things. A body is a place missed specifically. They met you in your body, where you couldnt go alone.

The spell:
unable
unable
unable
pretty soon

A power came up; it was in between the voices.
It said you could stop making sense.

Have you seen it? Of course you have. Based on
what? A red bird that caught fire on the alchemists
table.

The girls stood around in long paisley dresses, coyote cries
coming through them, something frightened and
being canceled. We werent on drugs then.
The thicket looked like a star of pub(l)ic hair.

You always want to control how everything will turn out,