Weiner - The figure of a man being swallowed by a fish

JOSHUA WEINER is professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author of The Worlds Room and From the Book of Giants and the editor of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn, all published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in Washington, DC. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 2013 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2013. Printed in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978-0-226-01701-3 (paper) ISBN- 13: 978-0-226-01715-0 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weiner, Joshua.

The figure of a man being swallowed by a fish / Joshua Weiner. pages. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-0-226-01701-3 (pbk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-226-01715-0 (e-book) I. Title. PS 3573. PS 3573.

E 3937 F 354 2013 811'.54dc2012023408 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Joshua Weiner The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago & London What meanest thou, O sleeper? Jonah 1:56 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the editors of the following journals, where some of these poems were first published: BODY: Things To Do While Youre Here Harvard Review: Cyclops Literary Imagination: Rock Creek The Literary Review: Rock Creek (II) The New Republic: Hikmet: ankiri Prison, 1938 New York Review of Books: First Walk after Cancer Ploughshares: The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish Southwest Review: The Winters Tale TriQuarterly: Florida: Schoolboy on Break Thanks to the Banff Centre, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Hawthornden Castle, Vermont Studio Center & ALSCW, and the University of Maryland for time and material support. One ROCK CREEK (II) Cutting a way through stone to see whats there, not how things appear, earth-blood, without style, never at rest, what settles in it read on the surface ripples meandering forward eddying back swirling turbid intricate plaits of water from the bottom rising turning upside down striking bank before returning to stream center original current indifferent to the play of light crystalline ideal forms a static lie, rather as Leonardo saw a motion resembling hair one must take five days to place water in a picture while a splash erupts into corona, its rim breaking into spills of droplets like the secret structure of rainfall scalloped edges of water joining water in common coil spawning vortices streamlines detaching as they hit fluorescent storm-swept traffic cones glowing half-submerged shedding eddies rushing faster by tightening gorge squeezed self-amplifying transmission as one flow drives another motion altering force driving that motion like Coltrane stretching tight vibrato phrases incremental shifts of pitch & tone the place its going unknown excited viscous harmonies continuously born/ devoured, cascades of smaller scales circulating airstreams the unregarded river of our life an overflow of meanings with no speech undirected as prisoners of Guantnamo flooding cells in protest each drinking eighteen bottles of water in an hour. And the breath, preaches one man having heard it from his father, the breath moved upon the face of the waters, while another speaks ex-con/activist, wry observer at the crossroads, how the system is hustling backward. * * * Not a river of history like the Patawmack big muddy highway Washington dreamed would connect the capital to a bountiful interior budging west, make him rich and keep the money moving to bind all parts together by one indissoluble band the foundings first boondoggle designated by law for the seat of Empire No, Rock Creeks histories converge as branches braiding like scoubidou a single spiral knotting that children weave to hold their keys it makes just one boundary of the verdant valley where LEnfant walked in great coat surveying space so every homestead of the nation would feel the influence of its streets radiating outward and slaves hew trees to open them metabolize sardines and salt pork to pry up stumps, haul, and cut sandstone for buildings housing classical moral sentiments that shant stop the flow of profits. * * * The 9:30 Club is not named for a time but a place it used to be, 930 F Street, now in a building on V, once broadcasting 1120 on your radio. * * * The 9:30 Club is not named for a time but a place it used to be, 930 F Street, now in a building on V, once broadcasting 1120 on your radio.

Inside, my son plays drums in a band with other nine-year-olds trying to rock the judges panel, 11 AM, a Saturday. And the parents are pumped, pulling for their kids on stage, a discrete loud screening of their own projections. Is it strange to hear children play their parents music, the history of styles like scarves claimed from an old trunk thats never put away.... They lend me a problem with the language, Fugazi, twenty-five years ago, But still / I was caught with my hand in the till. Up the street at Howard Don Byrds Blackbyrds Walking in Rhythm hit big, but its Rock CreekDoin it in the park / Doin it after darkthat laid down a track in 75 for Eric B. * * * Oak, tulip poplar, beech & laurel holly, dogwood on the hills, sycamore, red maple, wet, tolerant, all along the floodplain through steep ravines, gentle sloping hills, grassy meadows and the stretch of rapids south of Military Road, the Secession War captured in a street sign now as frenzied commuter route where 20,000 years ago nomads sharpened fluted points for caribou, elk, moose, black bear, mastodon & mammoth; the spring-fed tributaries feeding into open stream are sewer lines underground, silt & sand choke off the creek mouth at Whitehurst Freeway where ships ran up to P Street from Potomacs crowd of masts; and grist millsLyons, Deakins, Parrott, Peirce, Columbianall ran out of time to grind; and Benjamin Stoddert milliner, first secretary of the navy, who bought up land to create the capital now names the kiddie soccer team, an elementary school: in limbo, neither remembered nor forgotten. * * * If Rock Creek is a passage what will I find there in its leaves & pages, legible by moonlight, having passed by the White House of future poems, its sentries at the gates, silent, pacing in blue overcoats, stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes whichever way you move Whichever way you move, with me now from hospital to hospice of the creek, the pallid face of wounded light your way; and in the air, the moisture on the lip of the secesh boy, his fine large frame, patient mute survivor of the butchers shambles, his arm tossed on the departing amputation cart.... * * * If Rock Creek is a passage what will I find there in its leaves & pages, legible by moonlight, having passed by the White House of future poems, its sentries at the gates, silent, pacing in blue overcoats, stopping you not at all, but eyeing you with sharp eyes whichever way you move Whichever way you move, with me now from hospital to hospice of the creek, the pallid face of wounded light your way; and in the air, the moisture on the lip of the secesh boy, his fine large frame, patient mute survivor of the butchers shambles, his arm tossed on the departing amputation cart....

Little he knew, poor death-stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hoverd near, talked to him a little, but not much, moved closer, held his hand, and moves now in creek shadows, searching, fluid & firm... * * * Theres the cavalry camp on the hill & fixed pitch droning of an Ozark juice harp, its tart plucked notes opening melodic overtones bring to mind parted teeth & metal tongue vibrating freely, whiskey-wet mouth resonator! So refreshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive American young men; experienced with all their youth, their vocal play moves one more than books. Bloody pieces of muslin fill buckets by one who follows me, I carry him wherever I go, his great dark eyes with a glaze already upon them the choking faint but audible in his throat; and the surgeon who left him, without prospect, to death he must yield the field, and forget. And the population of the army bedded in the makeshift wards is more numerous than the whole of Washington; some thirty or forty such collections, each holding seventy thousand men, I use them as landmarks in my rambling outside the district of wounds, sickness, & death. * * * What will I find there, then, if Rock Creek is a passage, the crown of haze around the moon like stardust inked around the gunners nipple. Something veild, abstracted, dark columns moving through the night and I stand, unobservd in the darkness and watch them long, my own longing charged with the intimacies of the ward.