Heliopause
Authors: Heather Christle
Heliopause
Â
âª
Wesleyan Poetry
Heliopause
HEATHER CHRISTLE
Wesleyan University Press
â¸
â¾
Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2015 Heather Christle
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed and typeset in Whitman
by Eric M. Brooks
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Christle, Heather, 1980â
[Poems. Selections]
Heliopause / Heather Christle.
    pages; cm. â (Wesleyan poetry series)
ISBN
978-0-8195-7529-6 (hardcover) â
ISBN
978-0-8195-7530-2 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS
3603.
H
755
A
6Â Â Â Â Â Â 2015
811'.6 â dc23Â Â Â Â Â Â 2014044266
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration: Aerolith by Andy Gilmore.
âª
for Harriet
What is the language using us for?
It uses us all and in its dark
Of dark actions selections differ.
I am not making a fool of myself
For you. What I am making is
A place for language in my life
Which I want to be a real place
Seeing I have to put up with it
Anyhow.
â´
W. S. Graham
Contents
â´
â´
â´
â´
Such and Such a Time at Such and Such a Palace 42
Me and My Head as Pieces of Wood 43
They Are Leaving You a Message 47
Not Much More Room in the Cemetery 50
As If No Light Could Warm You 51
â´
â´
â´
â´
â´
Heliopause
A Perfect Catastrophe
To have stood midfield among the vast and livid green
and never heard the grasses take their vow of silence
is experience, not evidence, and meanwhile clouds descend
and buffer light. When did I arrive? I recall it came on
slowly as a fever as a poem is a communicable
please
.
What's in charge here is the scattered light all over
and how it pulls my very blood into my hands
until they graph a fat
what
the sun likes holding
and some dumb mutter good and nails me to the bone.
Disintegration Loop 1.1
âª
for William Basinski
Â
In seeking to resolve a conflict
between two parties
            one can assume
each believes it is acting
in good faith
  just as the hopeful
gravel waits for your rough step
â´
The only way to be truly alone
is for there to be nothing
not even myself
â´
In looping you rephrase after listening
to what the person has to say
what the person had to say
and having the new words affirmed
you wait and listen again
â´
Myself the eager magnet
for another to address
â´
Maybe I should think this a spiral
a loop that gets closer
a loop that will not close
â´
To make nothing
draw a circle
around what isn't there
â´
I found a note I left in the corner
of a part of the poem we rarely used
If you ever feel trapped
                it said
this is where to escape
â´
But legally I owe you nothing
I owe you at least that much
â´
Like being haunted by the spirit of the letter
â´
I remember my teacher's story
of two teenagers who died in a blizzard
trying to stay warm
           and the tailpipe
blocked with snow
so I always check
but it still happens
          just yesterday
a man's young son in what the paper
called
one awful story
â´
The light switch has a beautiful feeling
when a person reaches out to make it change
and the warm quadrangles of sun
on the carpet are beautiful too
and red berries on the gray bush
and the mail as long as it lasts
and beauty is what beauty does to you
â´
Like trying to say a seagull
inscribing a circle
over what land
the day has thought
to provide
â´
to enter into agreement with yourself
to lie but only out of love
for the verblessness of buildings
They do not rise except once
and then nothing
       how being is nothing
and if there were a word after
it would be a slow decay
â´
I will love across any distance
you think this has made to occur
â´
Nothing so ruthless as a life
â´
The day hangs low overhead
and soon enough the new grass will emerge
through the gravel
They have big plans to meet
in the middle
  and in so doing
to phase all this out
â´
I go on
    say enough and it will blur
off into sound
   look up and see that night
has nearly settled in and darkness
and hope that if I look into it
long enough and keep my mouth
quiet
 when I look down again I'll find
a settled word
   to which nothing
is attached
â´
Re: the day
           someone said
what doesn't kill you makes it longer
â´
It's like footsteps toward you
that sound for all the world like
they forever move away
â´
I keep forgetting I'm the smoke
not the camera
    Then I see my dark
joining sky to what's below
â´
Like watching someone
from across a river
          on such a clear day
that you can see her teeth
                      and at such
a distance
         that you can't hear the sound
so while you know
it must be screaming
            it is possible
to imagine her faraway mouth
which you can see but not save
has openedâis openâto sing
â´
After the collapse and before
the dust settles
                 the darkness billows
and grows
         like it's describing
itself to the sky
  Â
this
it says
this and much bigger
            but the sky
in its sorrow
             has had to turn away
â´
to expect praise for the beautiful apology
â´
to imagine something other than again
â´
Whether it is falling
from a ship
           or plane or a building
the human body starts its drop
at roughly one rate
â´
The book said legally
             thought the captain
of the slave ship
Zong
              to throw the people overboard
instead of letting them starve
would ensure compensation
                       for his loss
â´
And another has made
the words to decay
until what remains
is
  Â
loss   loss
â´
When I go to the video
it is paused close to darkness
the place
       where I had last stopped
and as I drag the cursor backward
so it can start again
          I'm reversing
into morning what was night
â´
The three buildings in the corner
begin a hypotenuse
          the dark clouds
âdiligentâcomplete
â´
The subsection of sympathy cards
labeled
words fail me
            on which we pen
sorry for your loss
â´
The lights that come on lastâ
what were they resisting?
Or do they not notice
as sometimes can happen
while the hours carry in
the new-fallen dark
â´
They say we have
fallen
a long way
           to the
cold
and planetary light
â´
They say
the bomb is a flower
â´
A body falls much faster
than the night
â´
You will forgive me won't you
for the lines
            I'm copying in
I do not want to be alone here
despite what I have said
â´
And I have forgotten
to mention the music
though it has this whole time
been mentioning me
I will say it is the sound of a clock
which has had all of its hours removed
â´
The screen is dark enough now
that it can perfectly reflect
the facing window
        a corner of morning
â´
And some of the lights
               they tremble
trying to decide
    whether they can go on
â´
Lights like pronouns for the buildings
â´
to remove to go through to withdraw
to slowly walk into another room
â´
What is legally an hour?
The time it takes the king
to fall asleep
the melting
of a candle in the snow
â´
Hour like
a jar in Tennessee