5 poems
from A Spreading Out, Like
TIME’S BUYING SICKNESS
I am sick with the Time’s buying sickness.
—Lorine Niedecker
The old people talk
about late spring
storms, swap eggs
for asparagus
This, they say, is
some of what it looks like
But what of this dog eared
month…I’ve existed without
knowing its rules, but that
the color your body plies under hot water
Aborted end of summer Don’t go
I think I’ve been here before Left to waste then over pasture
Clothesline pressures the grass back to seed
and a tomato plant opens
its cage
sweating in need
of a known natural
Can’t you tell
I need you to understand
her memories almost going
one son with
the cartridges and the other off with the lights
tight around the well
they all own one side of the road and an attic weasel won’t let sleep
I’ve passed the thought experimented
aneurysm, shucking garbage
bags full of clothes, finally
finding the right man
to fix the leak, five meters of copper
laid by a dead neighbor son and there’s
the thing, here’s the thing:
an apparent sun buttering the
field over this noon hour
Projector taut time and its avoidance
these summers one comes back
translucent
suitcase
zipper sealed
IN THE MIND OF LIMITED ABATEMENT
What else to liken yourself to but an animal, the ruminant kind?
—Claudia Rankine
Three deer moan an unfree
Three crosshairs bait
What else? What else constitutes the
good life? Sometimes you think like
the deer must, in the mind
of limited abatement. Shush.
Indefinite sprawl the trunk hemmed field
look through sunglasses
through the scope. Iterate
a (free) being been
unmarked for when marked
we are scored by crescents,
finally hashed into color
What else? Else we decide life
constitutes itself, desire
forecloses itself to a pinpoint
Wilding, wild wait let go come
on Wait
now you know what
I’m talking about
from the field once desert
there is something
here vandalizing me it creeps
You find out ruminant
is a category of being, of nutrient stasis. Chew it
over again; let’s do
it over again. Liken yourself
to an animal, to a gender, the slow kind,
the kind that sleeps
standing, the kind with
eyes in the back, with a will
to drop its neck.
OF LOVE MAYBE
I am lucid now, come see me
and my family, flush against the stoop
Like a tree in the shade, too
clever
And the photographs? no longer
off to war, none on another continent. The division
went over,
all parties agreed, each following
their own
life’s work, far from over here
She will be the first
to dole low. Don’t refuse
empathy, there is no grey. There is always a
spaniel waiting
and virgin ivy
I will never know history
Doors close. At night,
I can’t ask
Of love maybe or
worship
Count them up
TRANSLATION
That place was so clean you take
a train from down town
suburban hills
take a couple hours the facades are perfect
I used to go to the city when I was younger
you see that bit
of white? The first
tooth, oh my god
The previous owner
was a woodchipper, took
months to cart it all
away and shavings
still get stuck to sheets
to socks
I’ll go make dinner
chicken and pomegranate
you’ll be okay someday
you’ll need nothing
PLAGUE JOURNAL
Speech is always in excess of poetry as print is
always inadequate for speech. A word sets im-
ages flying through the brain from which au-
guries we recall all extent and intention. I’m not
a poet because I have nothing to give life to
make it due, except my attention. And I don’t
know if my wounded sort is enough. People
probably do hear watches go tic-tok. But I’m
sure my childhood clock went tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-
tic-tic…Why do I recall this in a city without
time? What hairy men find on their bodies is
amazing.
—Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
::::
in the devasted city
as far as I can throw
your good reasons
kill promise’s
stillborn truths
::::
in the divested city
death has nothing to do
with salt or water
peace-white gulls
notarize the boulevards the fugitive laundry
the barricaded water rooms
machine-can headlines
tin-can conflagrations
retained on interview
The New News:
for lack of finding
what is there
Manfolk search
O kiki who are you
::::
sustainable day noirs the sky
blue cancers the sky
::::
blinds up blinds down
good fences go make good neighbors
and their baby in their stroller
and their dog tied to their stroller
and a balloon tied to their baby
gently buffers any incidence
of wind and a securely installed swing swings gently
from backyard oak
fine line between inspiration and fear
this tight kitchen
::::
in the quarantined city
no weather
but the golem
of time
::::
Daily consuming
snow aesthetic
Icelandic cop shows
Finnish cop shows
and their 2 cup
coffee nap lighting
a whole mini town in on
globalization’s eco crisis
The Left Hand of Darkness
a whole season allegory
for a whole planet
a whole planet allegory
for a whole knowledge
a whole knowledge allegory
for queer love
almost not quite
how many words for “ice”
how many words for “hormonal
cycle” in a fictional
language never written
only invoked
::::
Nicole the weather
woman: “large
cone of uncertainty”
::::
feel weight
of own
tit in
right hand
co
signed
gender
or do I mean genre
::::
black T
shirt on floor
thinks it is animal
dog is my god is
dog a god like
if god’s dog
historian were
just tenured
crumpled shorts
on floor
laugh at fall
::::
in media res
this city
and its
new wave
of cancer alleys
this city filmic
this city anaphylactic
this city archaic
“I refuse to conform
to this way of life!”
yells a woman
at the Circle K
::::
in the deciduous city
thirty day’s first rain
bricks of atmosphere
hung by cheese cloth
headline: TOOTHPICK SHORTAGE
::::
August’s center pushes one oh five
everywhere a new streak counter
rainbow everything rainbow for sale
dogs and/or cats
colorful death charts
The Container Store: Yes,
we’re open!
The Mattress Store: Yes,
we’re open!
The Lightbulb Store:
“Have a bright day!” the man says
to the eleven dollar lightbulb
wondering if repetition makes
the joke more feasible
::::
in the city
un nameable
nine a.m.
boiling
riot riot riot
::::
heat chunks the week’s
elevator shaft morality
I want to be alive
you say outloud (boisterously)
to week whatever
economists have fallen
in love with the pathetic
fallacy
::::
me in my velocity box
& them: new man on the corner
each day: a new sign
for a different kind of acceleration
me, off to buy some pint
glasses, some vegetarian
sausages
later, smoking inside
your only form
of redress
::::
the old capitol bleaches
description’s limit
less cantilever
than will
like how survival
doesn’t want miserable life
storming the rain
in No’s universal lingua
frankly if no man is an island
then where is the sea
jetting bridges
to present situation
::::
Where grammar is
already (again)
corrected
::::
pirated whispers
glance off
the artificial lake
subdivision
subdivide
this view
north east south west
their names
gregarious
with pride
::::
L: “Why all these water towers?”
Maybe a painter?
Fixer upper in Manor
::::
latest investment swings evil
“where does all the dog shit go?”
an appropriate amount of take-out
all night long: trains
::::
another day another dollar
“Mass fatality incident”
slow, maybe
::::
No more masks! No more mythologies!
::::
Here silence profaned
no cease the ashed doves
Night cousins our crickets’ fuses
and not yet you that night
Light and definitely night
definitely I
hear them now
Campagnard prodigals!
broken clock’s worth of coco puffs
Hem of the sea fucking
how do you do that
Emma Train is a poet from Berkeley, California. A graduate of UC Davis’s MFA program in creative writing, she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is writing a dissertation on contemporary queer ecopoetics. Her poetry has appeared in the Colorado Review, the Berkeley Poetry Review, and is forthcoming in Grist. She was most recently a finalist for the 2020 Omnidawn Open Book Prize and a finalist for Interim’s 2020 Test Site Poetry Series.