3 poems
Sublime Notions
When Longinus marvels Sappho “seeks to make her mind, body, ears, tongue, eyes, and
complexion...join together in the same moment of experience,” note her mind is on the same
level as her body. Her mind is on the same level as her tongue. Her mind is on the same level as
her eyes. Her mind is on the same level as her ears. Her mind is on the same level as her
complexion. When Kant adds “her philosophy is not to reason but to sense,” note how senseless
to pay her no mind. Not to entrance for the exit, not to pinch the atrophied limb, not to back
from glib protrusion, not to run from mouth white noise, not to pass the stair to lift the self, not to
rail against transference, not to take into account these additions. From the limen to the lintel,
this needs to be discussed (disgust).
Did you come for heirlooms, fearing horses, fearing squid? Did you come for windows, fearing
otters, fearing teens? Did you come for linen, fearing marriage, fearing motion? Did you come
for a basement, fearing handwriting, fearing fog? Did you come for vases, fearing flowers, fearing
looking up? Did you come for cushions, fear fearing metal, fearing weasels? Did you come for
stitches, fearing chickens, fearing garlic? Did you come for a pit, fearing opinions, fearing dust?
In 1830 three men, one of them Coleridge, accompany a woman at the Falls of Clyde.
In 1830 Coleridge and some random gentleman stand near a couple at the Falls of Clyde.
In 1830 Coleridge and a male companion stand near a couple at the Falls of Clyde.
Some time passes before these various men recount the view by describing a “cataract of great height,”
a “summit...which appear[s] to blend with the sky and clouds,” a “shape that suits [our] purpose best.” It’s
“majestic.” “Majestic,” yes. She agrees, “it’s the prettiest thing [she] ever saw.” (Subtle gibes.)
In 1897 painter Jacob More puts the final strokes on “The Falls of Clyde (Corra Linn).” In it you see a
woman fearfully clinging to the gentleman beside her as she observes the falls. The gentleman stands
erect as he puts his finger on it. Two men standing on either side are also struck by the falls, but their
gestures are neutral, unnoteworthy. We can look at two bodies at that moment colliding, one pillaring the
other, bone rigid, flesh imperceptibly moving in varied waves around it. Or we can contrast reactions as
the promulgation of any urban myth.
Did you come from underneath, fearing metal, fearing clocks? Did you come from overcast,
fearing weasels, fearing wind? Did you come from bottom out, fearing narrowness, fearing chins?
Did you come from sideways, fearing opinions, fearing dust? Did you come from divits, fearing
fog, fearing machines? Did you come from downers, fearing empty space, fearing glass? Did you
come from bottoms up, fearing objects at the right of the body? Did you come from degradation,
fearing objects at the left of the body?
Lyotard writes, he has no need for beautiful nature. He’s holed up in a deduced point of his
residency. Meanwhile, her “free, reflective imagination,” is an impermanence created
without prior form or presumed ending. He must [violate, exceed, and exhaust] such
proclivity. For protection, she devotes herself to his forms. There is a “delicious rivalry” of
fertilization. Lyotard says if she doesn’t die “giving birth to the sublime,” she will think she is
dying.
Still, she sees fit with words felt to describe it: fundamental forty here percent scratches cleft
spitting child storm leaves here don dots large clouds verklempt don a largeness an unripe
rump hole the the unripe the nowhere waterstained dot lime claw ear tunnel never as present
here meander plunge pool collapse wait collapse wait for don dot unripe here dots here
transfigure should grip overhang pothole for which sentiment you gape betray openness
funnels a child rodentwine blanket hunger dots child proclaims an unripe lemon garter
above glossy bounce backyard gape here not scrambled catch bled back lead twirling here
callous stop no dot scramble all conception flossed gasping from now on waste polkadot
follicles
Not enough pain? Too few connections for your pleasure?
Cursive Serif Clocktime Cocktail
gives to airy nothing...habitation and a name —Shakespeare
Like loopy ligatures
garnishing an old-fashioned,
quills couldn’t cut it clean
If the grotesk needles the future
are we cursed?
Cyclical time is drained to digits
High and lowball bank on lithium expression
But I like font to stick like burrs;
You walk thru a field and there are consequences
To a habitat of juniper, lemon, and swallow...
-clink- -clink-
To stems with rosy curves—
-clink- -clink-
To reeling in plain habit!
-clink- -clink-
The Hippocampus and the Seahorse
It looks like a seahorse so our memory holds the hippocampus shape. It looks like a ram’s
horn but the seahorse is nonthreatening. There were many things resembling it that didn’t
have a name, so never were committed. Both were falsely mythologized for having a sense
of smell. Both cling to locations to stem the tide. Since forgetting is a defense—the
neuronal circuitry in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex sweep away evidence.
Experience boils down to simple shapes so we are more likely to remember. These shapes
limit us by producing a nod, just as the seahorse’s head only moves up and down. When
memory production is lost, depression follows, depression once said to be a “flaw in love.”
There are two hippocampi, one on either side of the brain, just as seahorses mate for life
and travel in tandem, holding each other’s tails. Memory is needed for happiness and
happiness is needed to make it. Devote yourself to memory or it dictates how you see the
world. There may be damage to that part of the brain, an eclipse or slowing down where
exploration is unreachable, trace pathways at a standstill. “Place fields” created by neuron
firings, indicate spatial knowledge based on prior experience. Does a seahorse know by
shape thalassic hemprichii or branch coral? By experience, halophytic mangrove or red
algae? Sadness may be never finding a meeting place where aesthetics are concerned:
walnuts uneaten dusty on the holiday cracker or ants crashing Corning Ware rooster rows.
False memory forms an association with eight things, say: dot, sledge, pink, tar, filament,
crash, stone, and petal. The patient is held to these neutral fixtures as targets for
forgetting, the lure a shape within which one thrives. We can also locate in the brain where
happiness occurred and plant those happy cells into a depressed part of the brain. So we
can remain to drum old happiness, survive within a constellation of false light, or leave to
make needed memories for happiness. The female seahorse travels back to the much
smaller territory the male inhabits. Call it a memory of closeness, the habit of returning to
the familiar. As in first the seahorse was named, then that part of our brain. So that part
of the brain is a memory.
Jennifer Pilch is the author of Deus Ex Machina, winner of Kelsey Street Press's FIRSTS! contest (2015) judged by Myung Mi Kim, and chapbooks Sequoia Graffiti (Projective Industries), Profil Perdu (Greying Ghost), Bulb-Setting (dancing girl press), and Mother Color (Konundrum Engine Editions). Recent projects include a collection of visual poetry entitled "The Decay of Timber" published by Gravel Projects. Her poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Berkeley Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Fence, The Iowa Review, New American Writing, Summer Stock, Tarpaulin Sky Press, and Western Humanities Review, among others. She edits/curates La Vague Journal, which publishes female writers and artists whose work occupies the space between poetry and visual art.