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LISTENINGforEARTHQUAKESRunner-Up, 2011 CAKETRAIN CHAPBOOK COMPETITIONROSMARIE WALDROP, Final Judge

LISTENINGforEARTHQUAKESJASMINEDREAMEWAGNER

Box 82588, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15218www.caketrain.orgcaketrainjournal@hotmail.com© 2012 Jasmine Dreame Wagner.Cover image “Drift Ice (Bering Sea near Saint Lawrence Island, Alaska)”© 2012 Dana Maiden. Used by permission.Printed on acid-free paper in Kearney, Nebraska, by Morris Publishing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSMany thanks to the editors and staff of Action Yes,American Letters & Commentary, Aufgabe, Caketrain, Handsome,Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock, New American Writing,Seattle Review, Verse, and Young Sun Pressfor sharing these poems in their original formsand for allowing me to reprint themwith grateful acknowledgement.

EXHAUST 15IN ALTITUDE 35WHERE MEMORY CRACKS 53AN AMUSEMENT PARK 65RIDE GONE WRONG 63COMPOSITION RETIRES 81

BLACK SWANSIt has been written, is written, will be writtenThat the first rule is that there are no rules; nothing is forbiddenAll that has happened is happening nowAll that will happen has happenedBut what of our poor view of what it is to seeIf all we have to see has been seenIf all we have seen we will seeWhat of our bifocals and contact lensesWhat of our cinematographerWhat of his union payAnd what does this lack of love do for the imageBaby, I want you to be all mineBaby, baby sweet babySince you’ve been gone11

Listen to me, unknown unknownsImage takes no shape other than its ownAn image that changes the image also changes image itselfAs an image elevated into a stadium alters the stadiumAs an image elevated to a wingIs the process of an image coming into beingAnd being is a domestic creatureCage-free and grass-fed of image-seeingO white sheetOn the brick wall of a general storeElevated into the constellationsBaby, I want you to be all mineSince you’ve been goneSince you’ve been gone12

Now listen to me,Unknown unknownsBecause we love, we are pickled in horrorsAll that has suffered is suffering nowAll that will suffer has sufferedAs an image elevated to its conceptIs an image curdled by its past/future contextKeys left in mailboxesThe radium girls, their cool mint fingers Timex-blueChimneys, spires, steam pipes, satellite dishes, equivalent and unconnectedThe tollbooth unmannedIts song of minor traffic violationsBecause we love, we conscripted this innocenceAre we strong enough to strike our own matches?13

EXHAUST

EXHAUST blears the sand on the underside of the acacia, theumber side of the umbrella, the yellow parchment, thistles slicingthe tarpaulin. We drive to a place and perform for it. We clatter incaravans. With cameras we graft the buffalo to the impala, the dikdik to the oryx. Our elands spawn hyrax, genet, civet, serval.Gazelles ignore us. Become contortionists. Consult thesauruses.Expend their whims, weave, bow. Topi break into couplets, vervetsscrape under crowny tomes. Dusk peels back a sky dark as anamethyst. In the crust, I spy a warrior. He extends a spear to seehow deep the water, how strong the torrent. A native womancradles an unknown object. I’m spooked. So are they.17

CHECKS AND BALANCESHAUNT OUR ORGANSA pencil break, retirement,adjacent monuments. As if historystuttered brothered objectssunning to be ventilated and released as muddries, desires to be brick on all sides. As we wishto be useful as leaves are new. To be feltas sun on a rug by a lover’s cat. To be silverdeer in moonlight on a hospital lawnand equally as quick. These things are the samething as heaven. Otherwise, the crowdwould be empty space. The camera’s shuttercuts the little gods out of each of us, and tomorrowwhen the album splits its pages into anteriorand antecedent, objects will be likenedto spirits again. The odor of cough syrup18

on a napkin. Each written confessionfurther from its transgression but closer to coffeeas the venetian blinds sample the sodiumstreetlight in measured portions. The room’sshadows, like sentences, tell it slant. Listen,someone inside is about to explainin present tense, as though understandingcontext ameliorates rift, as though meaningadjoins to echo in the operating theater:the nurse washes his hands again and again,untangles gold chains of stitchesas a bar code scanner at a checkout releasesmy belief in numerology.There must be a reason whythis dream of the nurse pursues me,if I could shame its keys to my hand, I wouldnever misplace them again. I might patent a methodin which digitized bells and whistles apply19

myth’s adhesive to the instant replayof my mind in my fist. Like a prizefighterdowned in a corner, the futureisn’t what it used to be. Its wet dog tremblesin the autumn wind, its day-glo poplarcurtain parting like the scent from potpourrithat with luck and thrift outlastedthe transplant of its origins. Proofthat hunger endures a body,then shifts. Our great tectonic lovedigitally remastered to stream at a faster frame rate,and in its gestalt, somehow, I see my nursebetter now that the towers rust together.Gray light will come and plait the room like a skirt.I won’t recognize dust, even if it asks the right questions.I won’t fast-forward to bring the runner home,or a distant helicopter spectacleto the tiny shuffle of envelopes20

where a smoke tendril spirals into a peacock’s tailabove a rock crystal ashtray. Already, I knowwhat will remain with me like fuzzon my knees after I have stooped to retrievesomething he has dropped, like a lancet,or an atlas, or a drum stick, and I pausethe playback long enough to consider his wrist,its contiguous pulses, how somewhere in an arctic forestthere is a warm clump of earth for each of us.21

GREENPOINT TERMINAL MARKETFollow the yellow line tothe yellow weeds in theiryellow ditches: gasoline,one rosebud match to spark andburn like a television.Paranormal glow of theCiticorp Center, aqua-marine of a caged parrot.Ruin is a cultured pearl.22

Rain comes as requirement.Requires we submit toits loose, fluted memoryfluttering like a receiptin the incision, humancoloredhaze in the hollowsector. Iron sleeves of drainagewhere pigeons in wirelessslate skies return to roost,lucite-winged moths narrowingbeneath sodium streetlampsdimas the maples in the parkturnon—23

Sleep without memory, ourruin.Past deferred from becomingin the foreground of trauma,passed, from emerging legendruin itself, traumatic.Its fingerbone begs us tounearth its contusions fromcorridors of lightning-singedChristmas holly. Ruin isforensic, identityas many forms of erasure24

as preservation: coin-tossdistribution of spiders,dandelions in bluegrasswhere bulbs of black brands curl frommilkweed sown in sow-thistle:waxmyrtle coils, smokestackstitanium light has cursedwith specificity, eachraw wire, each cinquefoilchrysanthemum equallyalight in terse, unrehearsedtestimony that marks theirplace as site.25

—from the northernwhirlpool of Spuyten Duyvilto the southern breach of timelapsedbarges’ haul, the Narrows,the East River under goldleaf,rippling, oil-steeped weltcoal-thick with potential, itspillars of pyrite, jaggedskyline hazardous with zinc,cadmium, thallium, lead,benzene, silver, osmium,nickel, carbon monoxide,sulfuric acid, rubber,asbestos, arsenic andfiberglass—26

—from the open field to thecurtilage, to the tag-pockedhull, stripped with chemical wash,from desire to rumorfrom dynamite to fiber-optics, from arson coevalto vagrant, to armed guard, tohex, to diode, to copperbarredbales of synthetic knits,polyester butterflycollars, silk crêpe ruching, shirredcrates of marjoram rotburnt—27

In the end, a fly dies asflies die.Our rust, not our fearconfigures the elements.Ruin is a misspelled word.Our ruin comes second-hand,like clothes.Radium buriedin an ingrown nail.Footprintslike neologisms wecannot reverse.Ruin isa cask of flies.Neither deadnor alive, the mass.In theend, a fly dies as flies die.28

When a body moves withinruin,the body becomesthe impasse within its core.The ruin becomes a cask.The body becomes a cask.All that becomes,becomes acask.All that becomes,becomesa core.Ruin is not meantto be amplified,though itis bought and sold as more,more.29

When a body moves withinruin,the body becomesremains.Not meant to be named,a body is not a namefor a body is not meantto be covered.Ruin isnot memory,though it steepsits ward in memoriammore often than not.Ruinis naught and knot and ø,asruin should and could and oughtand when in the scabbard ofkite and cot and caught,is wrought.30

Dust filming the lung of a hepafilter. Clotting the blades of a whiteplastic desk fan. Red lettuce leaf, heirloom tomato. Cloud oil, cidervinegar. Satellite in a stone statuary. Drywall between iron pylonsaccreted along McCarren Park. Meridians of cathedrals cached underglass atria. Asterisks. Camels along the Dead Sea. Bauhaus. Driedmackerel strung from coarse hemp twine. Green vireo born with onebent wing. Cellular transport. Cubed Styrofoam. Charcoal.31

LISTENING FOR EARTHQUAKESIN A SHADOW ZONEThe moment the brass buttonvanishes, the lemniscusof lemon root turns leitmotif.A white towel dries on a hook.In cirrus, sycamoresloaded with minutes. A blue orchardsinks its anchor and steeps.A name for a zipper is closed to the soul.Trapped in a room of red sand. A bluepill capsule lifted into a trainwindow becomes a lemonthe way wind in lemongrass harborsblue light. The way a riflesmells of pink snow and tobacco.The way howls affix ravens toglyphs. Given Lepidoptera, Lepidopteradehisce. Given index, a desertaerially strafed. Given alphabet,a gray flag of rain, a tenementstrewn through it. In a life,32

one pours milkinto a crystal vase, nakedas a number. In a life, pinesdevour starlets. Sandwhipped in a hurricanelamp. Given forgiveness, Lepidoptera.Given forgiveness, black mulberrylipstick scrawledthe flight of cranes in a train window.A church organist pens the word parasiteon her wrist. Maples blowinto orange cysts. An autisticpredicts the fall of an ice pick.By the time words have been liberated,books will know the absenceof books. Will know whiteannuals. Uranium tailings. Bullfrog eyeclotted with maggots. In a life,a lime, a rivet. A cameratucked into a spine.33