Alison Powell's poetry has appeared in journals including Black Warrior Review, AGNI, Puerto del Sol, Caketrain, Quarterly West, RHINO, Denver Quarterly, Cream City Review, New Orleans Review, and the anthology Best New Poets (2006); her work is forthcoming in Guernica and Spoon River. A recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Writers at Work, she was the Agha Shahid Ali Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in 2006. Her first book of poems (currently titled On the Desire to Levitate) has been a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize, Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series, and semi-finalist for the Walt Whitman Award (National Poetry Series). She is pursuing her PhD in Literature at CUNY, focusing on the Renaissance and Metaphysical poets. Originally from Indiana, she now lives in the Lower East Side and teaches at Fordham University.
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On the Desire to Levitate
Punctuated embroidery of missteps, shoulder of the road,
steam in and out of the grates, then: flight. Light as a feather,
stiff as a board-- down there the earth, the inflexibility. To miss
appointments. And the cleaning, the lost letters, hard
laughter and bribes. Who can stomach these parlors. Shell game
of sentences, release me from tenuous humans everywhere.
I have been a cage, and am cagey; the seething jabber,
schedules, armies, arms of madmen, make my lust
for the encyclopedia and the darkened desk.
The seminary man, I do not fear him, do not
believe him. But I want to watch my words with him,
catalogue my sins to go heavenward, drunk, delighted,
electric lights bursting in the street. What strength
in silence, to lift like that, over so many no's. A calm braided
embrace-- there she goes. I believe nothing today, only
that the girl burned the field, the man shot his wife, the child
went deaf, the flower bloomed in the oily garage, I loved,
was loved, no longer loved, was no longer loved. Presto.
Eurydice and Orpheus
After the venom, you called as a man
with catchpenny will. With metal hunger.
One glance and I was in the hot seat again-
long drop, yanking the spines, asunder
in the same crowd of muscle, root, nonsense.
What a raw deal. There is nothing to do,
so I learn this language: oak means patience.
Sweet tussilago, Justice shall be done you.
May you have nothing but echoes, reruns
of my face made see-through in this untended
land; the backward slip-n’-slide, our gummed
up lust. Of our bodies, I only remember
my roar, jack-knife, that I was pure ricochet;
your fidget and grin, meretricious way.
*
Queen of the Avalanche of the Underworld:
Meretricious? I buried you, I'll say
it. Never worse off was a man-- unfurled
in you, I could talk rivers out of their way--
but what the gods predict, we execute.
Guileless I looked, pickled you in that dark
port. Now, hat in hand, I'm earthly, aloof;
I live in this world of men, all war and lark
and my regrets follow you to the grave.
I went to the sirens; underwater
(those hooked cheekbones, arms waving in the clay
bleachers) it's a floating opera. No matter
which interview I perform here in limbo,
the muteness of you extends, riotous.
Jeffersonville Indiana, 1983
Why we are sure tired. The grocery carts drifting pods.
Our mistakes steeped in the dull milk bath. Our worst
crop nebulous, gray, seeded. The heat. Hurry, we've run out
of each other, silent and spiteful-- children from prim dumb
women, deft with scissors. The world full of butterscotch,
paper dolls around the head like a tight white crown,
brown bag chain-link garlands droop. The heat. Any minute
now. Death-defying. Plucking raisins out of carpet, knee
to shag. Morning, glass and phone, morning oh my, gold
watch and sewing, tomato pin cushion red breast, mis-
carriage. Why was that the doorbell. It was such grace,
heard from inside this fireplace. What precision. This sticky
toothed heat, willows, locusts. My what empty. What lapping
shadowy strides. Shuffleboard sand and cigarette smoke,
here's to a speedy recovery, patent leather shoes like a fist. |
