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How you are made

Emily Martin

002

There was calm on the day
you were born before and after
the party nobody died,
no branches cracked under feet.

Congelation, this mereness
This ardor and starlight and chantilly gelatin, who would ask the ones beating you for help?
long cracks in a grey glaze,
painting into the wet wall
“in this section there is much crossing of hands”

Well I had many events going on, on wove paper a line drawing
tells you where the weight is falling, in conversation
he will through ample resources, hide a knife inside the cold cranberry.

transparent enough to be refused
what I want, how can a still image tell you so much
about the ways she solved her problems as a child?

And I in my snow globe will miss the leaves falling from the trees I will not mark it,
I will stay in the room of carpets and roll up my anguish in a doll’s costume and then they’ll
see it, o they’ll see it they’ll see it then won’t they!

Up and down the aisles I read once and quickly
considered how highlights hit my image and congealed
the surface of your letter into my reply, as isinglass at twilight
paves the insides of mussel shells, smells just as disgusting

No one talks, no one moves like this morning
show landscape of jellied shards, very nice
belongings that will punish you if you are bad
and make you who you are: you eat it, you’ve eaten it, it’s time to go.

*

Seduction of this
It was beautiful. It had a hatch.
An idea or treatment
For trees burning on the inside
May include
Different temperatures of feet and the sun—
the other one—
and ought not angels’ constipation
turn a brief exchange into a gift?

How you are made in a bleakness
bleak and merriment
bleak and not without
merriment, hatching into and out of
rainbow light still reflects in your shadow
as you change your mind like so many dancers rehearsing
glances held over glass and flame I will read them
over and over your wild and tiny addresses, leapings and grimacings
weep below the turnpike, morning light at kitchen table why would anyone else be in love with
these pieces of light like I am in the morning
cloak this that delighted you once, surprised you enough that you built your whole life around it,
eluded you long enough to keep at it forever, there’s no end, there is infinity inside you
and you can be a sportsman to it, a comedic sportsman.

I read your letter again
in variant time, in the aisles
of rehearsal, in the hatch I need your help
to add a silent e to milk
the sound and get the torquing right
in any time of day’s last words surrendered
to an iridescent bruise, to be the surface
and the underside at once

*

Lovely, lovely soup. Lime soup, I want to remember
your mind’s graceful container partaking, torn to pieces this depth
out of nowhere bucolic, which world and how much a part?
Spent your life on the ocean for an audience of one,
leapt into the arms of circumstance
when she calls
does she wear bracelets
and on this very midnight cease
to want to talk to me, or put me in this scalar light
white pieces of cloth I will have to, graceful container, tear to pieces.

in a half light, half ways seen to be one or the other’s best day, swallow repeated begging center
come off the trees
distress comes off the trees “Why she painted people sitting up waterclosed?
Hatching into and out of each other— As if you could make a marbled eggshell in your body
Sitting up waterclosed “Good hatching everyone, ladies, good hatching to you

Glowing white spider crawls into my cup

But later on the phone— “I don’t feel like that’s who I am as a person”
“I don’t feel like—

tracking supply chains of cashmere or Fiberglas,
angles of reclining threshers
congealed vectoral
lamb underfoot you were born
under a disseminating moon
go with them to their worlds and days
Resplendent world it is not going to survive, it is going to survive, Extinguish

They [all] exit

*

Truly to you I am speaking
in my name I am not dreaming I have gone outside
and come back in to sit at this table and tell you what I think
about the resplendent world and its attendants
it is not a dream to say we have the right to stay alive
without proving our worth I will not, I will go outside,
count the leaves on the trees
how they get to the ground
when the cause is desire to punish,
sometimes I want to punish myself too

What is a salvational practice that depends not on humiliation
What is an oppositional practice that depends not on humiliation
What is an oppositional practice that depends not on your opponent

This being a cathedral city, we have blue tarps
in fluorescent snow, and inside jokes to brush
against them, sleigh bells on bungee cords,
racked up for wet the snow

The backdrop, which is total war, is there,
and the ceremony once again a dance you are pushed
up against you are ordered to move but have nowhere to go

Certain small packets are made and given
by those who come to grow you up
and take your coat of awe and usher
you into the jellied furnace—
Oh your scrapbooks? Your little ribbon collage?
Whoever drops their mask, or confesses to jealousy,
or doesn’t fear the ridiculous, winds up wretched,
that’s the law. I am not dreaming
I am not on horseback I am not on wings without a head
I could be the executioner of those who use violence
to prevent the removal of suffering they’re combining
aren’t they, they’re getting worse

But when you talk to other people, you’re shocked by what they say, where they’re coming from

Another pane like an iridescent bruise appears down the hallway, just a sidestep away,
another iridescent pane the trees are bare, the veils are out the lightest
of green and lilac and deep red and thinnest blue, the thinnest blue in the air,
slight and more intricate technologies of the dead

That you loved and kept company those others so long in their infinite books, you’ve been
showing them how to use the computer haven’t you, computer classes for the long dead led by
the recently dead, you’re teaching them how to use the internet. Well I just want you to know that
I got your message and I thought it was beautiful.

Truly to you I am speaking in my name
In this section, for a group she calls
There is much crossing of hands, trailing a little behind
they were stopped, wondering whether any had heard
a voice asking at night, in the mulberries, or
How did the daylight get in there
and how will the meaning come out in the morning?

Morning arrived and it did milk him
as we wrestled with birds and were moved
out into the itchy bogs go the quietest
to sit in the juice with our lossless echoes that
halo around you is just another person

b Aside from another weird dream I am alive and I feel everything A poetry periodical Issue no. 2 (Home)

Aside from another weird dream I am alive and I feel everything

A Poetry Periodical

Issue no. 2

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b

Aside from another weird dream I am alive and I feel everything

A poetry periodical

^{Issue no. 2}

^(Home)

Aside from another weird dream
I am alive and I feel everything

Purchase Issue no. 2 tote bag

designed by Greta McGuire.

Email asidefromperiodical@gmail.com.

$20 + $5 shipping