Nathaniel Mackey
Tu boca es mi perdición…
—Camarón de la Isla, “Pañuelo a Rayas 2”
____________________
Itamar’s Netsanetian Sojourn
—“mu” one hundred eleventh part—
“So goes it,” Netsanet said, began
by saying, lip let hang, dejected, all
the more inviting Itamar thought.
Lip
summoning lip he remembered,
made-up memory, mouth all his, hers
not to be had, all the more inviting
he
thought… Sweet Ethiopian mead
made their heads turn, mouth massing
ruin, sweet reticence, boon they’d
all
but kiss… Tantric restraint they called
it, ythm’s would-be jump, an if so
thick they tasted it, tej what kept at
bay…
They stood watching smoke rise at
the edge of Low Forest, the light a
bomb gave out going off. Netsanet
City the plot it all accrued to, site they
saw
tej portended, tej gambit the book
said it was… They took to their lips the
dry mead cup’s brim. A throwback
Zeno
called it. Zenette called it so as well,
of late on the scene again. “We were
too hot,” Itamar said to her “So goes
it.” He said, “Cupped Ethiopian horn
light
cooled us, bowed light curved our
way…” He said, “Had it not been so I’d
have insisted, a cupped hush the rub
sound
tej made. ‘So goes it’ goes only so far,
not far enough…” Beggarly thought,
thought’s compass collapsed. Beggarly
thought, mere thought, all thought… An
un-
spun wheel they’d
be
•
Netsanet City soon faded, place one
with comeliness up in smoke. Flash
thought fallen away, fleet mingling,
glimpsed extension kaput… Mouth
rum-
maging mouth mere conceit, no sol-
ace. A new city of sad children lay
ahead… Retreat to the hills though
they’d
have wanted to, from Athens back
to Addis they’d come… They’d eaten
meat with bits of orange in it, ret-
sina washed it down. Their tongues
tast-
ed orange peel and resin when they
kissed, kiss they’d held back from on-
ly to resume kissing, Tantric letting be
let
go… Quick as they were in they came
out of it, retsina’s cry far from tej
gambit, Greek to both of them. Again
they
drew back. Tibet they might’ve been
in… A tale was being told. No one knew
who told it, synaesthetic sound of
orange in the air, sound itself new to
them,
strange again, both beginning to ask
what sound was… Against my will I was
a tiptoe ghost. Nobody knew it but me,
soon-
to-be gumshoe ghost. A soft-shoe croon I
let out, low croaks for emphasis, intent
on lying low inside what sound was… A
tale
was being told. I told no one I told it. I
tiptoed around it, sheer perimeter, stark pa-
rameter they’d have known had they known
what
sound
was
•
There would be the announcement of
things digested we were told, intent on
our low incline to what sound was,
en-
dured it said in some accounts. The
much alluded to book lay open, pages
ripped away by the wind. This no
more
than a glimpse, then gone… So it
was or so we’d say it was, Netsanet’s
visit heuristic, a wrinkle the air got
thick with, Itamar’s ledge as much
my
ledge as his, hers as much as ours
if not more… So it was or so we’d say
it was… So it was and so we said it
was,
a feather caught in a crack. A feather
lifted up as we saw the whole of Low
Forest lift, a feather lifted up on an up-
draft, Netsanet yanked it free… Thus
the
new book would begin, the Low Forest
levitation of yore. Lift whose like never
again to be seen, such it was we’d say
we
saw… A certain self-installment we saw.
A certain circularity we’d have wanted
to say tej gambit was, honey stuck to
the
roofs of our mouths not letting go, a
new lease on sweetness we’d have sworn
was what we saw, so not knowing yet
what
sound was… Stuff happens we’d in-
sist even so, knowing not knowing all the
same as we could see, now no longer
sure what see was, say that we did though
we
did, sure as we were what say was… This
we knew, some sort of tale was being
told and would be told, “mu” as in mouth
again, “mu” as in ground, Netsanet country
the
lay of the sayable, unlay’s roll going off into
water, would it were Lone Coast, white
water petticoats, Netsanet’s under cloth…
The
moon tugged at her dress and so did the
wind we heard it said. The world we looked
out at underneath it gave off light, Netsanet
the
singer, Netsanet the song, Ornette’s lonely
woman with breaking wave accompaniment,
seals barking under the pier… So sang the
singer, so went the song, unsprung ictus what
it
there was left of it, Itamar’s namesake what
what was, Itamar’s whatsaid whoosh. A
bird it might’ve been blew in, blew out, a
gull,
a storm petrel, a gale it said would come,
white water rolling like drums, run come,
run the white lace we’d see… Was it Netsa-
net’s whatsaid web we were in we wondered,
Net-
sanet’s namesake net. Gray water, gray fog,
fey underness. Was it thus the ledge was we
wondered, lift we lay under looking up at,
Lone
Coast underness overness, lift we somehow lay
thru… Netsanet’s namesake net it must’ve
been, ledge part lid, part hammock, something
some
said was what sound
was
____________________
Itamar, for one, stood up and stepped away.
He moved his arms like a swimmer, in over
his head he wanted to say. Wanting back
in
on his perch, he said instead, “Ledge that
I want you ledge…” Low Forest mist
might’ve been low clouds on Lone Coast. I
saw
it now he was Brother B, he blew cave can-
ticles. I saw he came out of it bleeding…
Netsanet no longer with him, a name in the
air
if that
____________________
Netsanet’s valerian silence, nonchalance…
Perimetric intrigue. Parabolic hover…
A say-it-without-saying-it sonance
ed-
died about them. It met the say-it-
again sonance head-on… They scooped
honey from thought’s cup, a beggar’s
bowl
it seemed. A echoic shell it
sometimes
was
Nathaniel Mackey has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. Mackey currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.
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Itamar's Netsanetian Sojourn
Nathaniel Mackey