HEATHER
CHRISTLE
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Heather Christle's poems bubble with surprising images and
startling tonal changes; she keeps you moving through a landscape as bright and
inviting as an arcade game. "Brochures have a thousand pictures and a
thousand uses," and these poems too have their thousands, calling to mind
the lapidary surfaces of Crane and Ashbery. The
magnificence of these poems comes in a tiny car, and we all fit, like a
compressed sandwich of rainbow-colored clowns. Christle's
--D A Powell
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FIVE POEMS FOR
Can-can dancing just won’t stop
hurting
its women.
is
full of stories and women.
Once
in
lost
their money and had
lunch
later. Dancing the can-can
shows
resilience more clearly
than
ever because women have
less
money and less strength.
This
sounds ugly but my legs
don’t
want much except
for
clean pants and stuff.
*****
No
way is that cowpoke
bringing
me home. He wants
someone
to fix his religion.
Believe
me, I love religion
but
he’s too quiet when
he’s
praying. Look, he left
and
the bar left and the jukebox
fixed
everything. I love this
music
and I love this land,
so
empty of real trees and hymnals.
*****
Charge!
I said, but nobody
heard
me, because they were all
listening
to their mother, the iPod.
Their
mother said a lot of stuff
I
didn’t hear. Magnificence comes
in
a small car, but we all fit.
*****
Democracy
stinks. My classmates
elected
the hamster. Teacher
doesn’t
vote and can’t change
anything.
Hamsters die all the time
for
good reasons. Once I was
a
hamster who loved waterparks
but
nobody ever knew. Secrets
are
also for presidents.
Teacher
knows very little.
*****
Northern
states. Eastern states.
Where
are the armies?
One
soldier means trouble.
Five
soldiers make a party.
War
never means much.
Let’s
bring the soldiers
somewhere
they might like.
Let’s
go to Pizzeria Uno
and
not eat anything.
THE HANDSOME MAN
Walking through the forest I found
you
strapped
to a tree and half-fainting.
My
god you were beautiful,
your
sword sticking out like a sword.
Attempting
to revive you, I strutted
around
the tree seven times, in my
matchless
squirrel coat. You seemed
distracted,
though, by the lepers’
parade
as they lumbered by, singing
Oh woe is me, my feet are cold,
I cannot find my barrel.
I
took off my coat and disguised
myself
as a rooster with a cruel eye
and
taxable plumage. There you are,
Manfred!
you
said, as your bonds turned to vapor.
You
tucked me under your arm
and
set out to slay something, while I struggled
to
take off your pants with my beak.
WILDERNESS WITH TWO MEN
Some of the trees looked like snakes
and
it was dangerous to step on them.
We
were going somewhere,
somewhere
important,
and
we were in love,
but
not with each other.
We
spoke with little smoke
signals
we picked up
at
a trading post,
but
we were running
low
on every phrase except
those
concerning the weather,
so
these were our words
for
affection, hunger and loss.
At
the mouth of the river
we
had to part and reunite
with
our enormous wives and families.
We
divided up the supplies:
tin
cans, rope, rocks
shaped
like women,
lighter
fluid and dice,
building
two neat piles on either bank,
and
then stood across from one another,
sending
up the last of the signals.
Not My
Native Tongue
I would love to undress you.
I
suspect underneath
the
zipper you are
no
less than gold
that
you emit a fat
bold
light. That in sleep
you
curl up completely,
a
red plastic fish.
Look
at you flickering.
And
it means you are stubborn.
It
means you are constant.
It
means your little dance.
If
I spoke Russian, dearest,
I
would say to you
From
whom did you receive a letter?
Who
was wearing a pretty dress?
What’s
new? What does this word mean?
What
are you writing?
What
happened?
Nothing
to live on.
I
feel like sleeping.
You
feel like sleeping.
We
feel like going to the movies.
LETTER TO MY LOVE
Dear lord, you are no back-breaking
orchid.
You
will give that man your last dollar.
When
I meet you, lord, I curtsy, chop and mitigate
the
customs, and you, my muff-diving butternut
go
whooping through the corridor like it’s the last
day
of summer and you’re Mr. Moneybags
reminding
us all to tread sloppy water.
Lord,
I saw the kettles gather in the stonefields.
I
saw the mimiscus fall asleep.
When
the masons shook their glory
from
their bright and feathered hairdos
I
turned away, lord, turned to see you
gallop
down the highway. Where were you
headed?
Even now, a light year
from
that beating, I want to know.
VEHICLE
Brush off the annual evaluation
meeting
and
fly over Connecticut in a small
private
plane. I have no idea what that
feels
like to you or to anyone. Man
in
the dining car, stop eavesdropping
on
children talking about balloons.
You
are too heavy for light aviation.
Best
of all is the hovercraft, then you
can
barely call it flying. Go away,
often.
Visit London. Visit aunts.
Brochures
have a thousand pictures
and
a thousand uses. You could make
a
travel room from your den, just
by stapling them to
the lamps.
Only
from the world’s flimsiest spots
will
the light shine through.
TRUNKLESS
The
trunkless tree was threatening me. It hovered
angry over the butchery, not even
a
trunk’s shadow, so arrogant and leafy I thought its redness was the sky’s
lashes
and
there was no hope in it. Someone said I think this tree is not
real. How can it do that?
How
can you do that? he shouted at the tree. Just stand there and say I am
the tree?
and
while he pleaded he stood beneath the tree where there should have been a trunk
and
the tree shat upon him. The neighbors said serves you right, you
nuisance,
and
someone else took a photograph of the man and tree in shadow.
The
next day it was in all the papers, the red tree and its vertical line.
There
were those who wrote what a magnificent trunk, it resembles a man.
This
is a miraculous tree, a tree we should follow. And the butchery
filled
with flowers from well-wishers, smelling impossible to reproduce.
EXAMINATION
Undoubtedly you contain an orchard
and
in your young trees and your trees
which
droop with lemons I am hiding
my
muscular face. I once built a pantomime
for
William of Orange – it showed,
in dancing,
trapeze acts and startling
monologues
a king lost in an orchard
not
inside you, therefore colder, losing
crops
and daughters to frost.
Ice
can’t grow inside you, but over
everything
else a layer forms and the world
goes
glassy and quiet. You shatter opening
the
car door, you pirouette through
bridge
tolls, shaking up your orchards,
shaking
down your lemons. I wish
you
could join me, peeking my head
from
a barrel to watch the bright fruit
roll
eagerly to the revival.