Contributor Notes
Permissions:
Watercolour on paper, 2008, by Justine Frischmann
AChapbook 
by Aimee A. Norton
ThisPoem Is Your Permission No one gave it to Chandrasekhar leaving the Bay of Bengal sailing for Cambridge in aheadwind. He did not wait for the right Find an ocean of consent He had done wonders an approved co-author list. Recognition has its ways. First is ridicule, looking for the wet-nurse of entitlement. Where is she to give me the nod, This poem is your permission. Love is the greatleveler. Everywhere it’s busy turning geniusinto fools and fools into genius. Look outside,Rachel! See the shimmering? That’s nosunshine. It’s the sheen of activepathogens rained randomlyonto throats of the unwary. It’s a substanceengineered to short-circuit logic and make newcouples. Everyone, everywhere – haphazardlysparked into the act of un-separating. Go ahead then,Rachel, get vaccinated. Join in. Think you are thefirst to take the heavy serum of someone elseinto your veins. Drink them intensely until your ownskin is unknown. In the end, you’llwalk away stronger oryounger or crippled or refreshed, but changed forknowing the fury at which bystanders can onlymarvel. The only guarantee – you’ll spend the rest of yourdays carrying a dead knowledge of this loveinside you. Regretting,worshipping, eventuallyforgetting. Immunity will beyour only proof that it once ran livingthrough your veins. EverythingSpins
a brown teenager
He simply sat in his berth
thinkingabout electrons inside a dead star
until he knew how to correct
other people’s equations.
One is left speculating on otherpossibilities.
credentials beforestepping towards the door,
before turning the ring on his finger.
No seated official sold him a permit.
No one will give you clearance, either.
Reach in to whatcame before names.
perturbed by the largest things.
One is left speculating.
Half a century later,
Chandrasekhar hadno need
for the Nobel Prize in his pocket.
without the right skin-tone, without
the glass paperweight of freedom.
One is left.
As for me, I peer around corners
the go-to-it signal, so I can start
pulling life through the sieve assigned?
Go on. Calculate the internal structure
of a star in the summer you turn nineteen.
Electrons in lonely orbits, our Sun on nuclear point,
and the Milky Way in grainy, star-spangled splendor.
Oh yes, everything rings-around-the-rosie –
Opa in the beer garden, El Niño and La Niña
in fickle pursuit of an average, each silver jack on sixth point
spinning love’s back story towards a thirty year mortgage.
It can not be helped. Electrons annihilate
to meet their mates. The spiral arms of our galaxy
collapse in a halo of Bremmstrahlung
if they dare clasp the black hole in the center.
If fortune sat on my chest, I’d tornado down, too,
sending pretty SOS signals near the vortex.
There are times I’d give up spinning
to see the bold extinction, to hear Sylvia singing.
But courtesy to stasis paid, to market and back I go.
The spider in her web anchors radials with spinnerets.
I arc out here (the laps, the years). Dervish well
with arms flung wide to honor the heavy centers.
Somewhere Here,
a Spell of Indifference
This body, it could be any body.
Rather, any body could be mine.
And the town, well, it is any town–
the street names wiped clean atdawn.
My husband, an arbitrary man,
is no less and no more than othermen.
The children, small dear loaves oflife,
are randomly being drawn out bytime.
Anywhere, with any one,
any me could be.
I can’t tell if the sentiment
is laudable or laughable,
whether I’ve attainedenlightenment
or disillusionment.
But clearly, it doesn’t matter.
The menu is always the same.
The apples arrive with
their leafless stems,
and the bird outside my window
is the same one outside yours.
Romeo Nation
I’m grateful to lovers, every one,who flashed me the salt in their eyes
or Morse coded me in pleasure textto say passion
is a part of compassion. But mymemories are pocked on all sides
by girls in tight cotton wearingNO on silver necklaces,
bank tellers of reproduction,these ascetics sat upright
with books covered in the brown,grocery-sack paper of thrift.
They insisted I do the same. Fear rose from them like startled birds.
The No-girls quick-syllable wordswere bought behind counters
stocked with lottery tickets andplastic saints.
I pitied such shortsightedchastity.
What they called a one-night standwas transformative.
Sex dissolved pain in thedetergent of time. How empowering
to be chosen, even neon-lightbriefly, by another.
As a genius teenage fuck, I wonthe Nobel Prize for pleasure
several years running. My talent was seeing each brittleyeoman
for who he really was. In return, I was dubbed as easy,gained
a reputation spread by the firetongues of the No-girls,
I threatened the sexualeconomy. Brigitta called me Slut
in her strangled pigeon voice. SoI played parade music,
straight-ahead drum and bugle, andmarveled on the downbeats
at all the No-girls didn’tknow. This: a talisman against loneliness
is an old lover’s name spokenaloud. And this: even a memory
of being held remains strongagainst the bowhead of time.
So here’s my note to thesanctimonious: Stop dinging
the sides of my dreams withfictive piety. Up ahead,
I see the Romeo nation, whereLatissimus Dorsi curve
into the small of men’s backs and a chorus of stories
are sung as tongues become bluntinstruments of bliss.
TheWarlpiri people explain a solar eclipse as being the Sun–woman being hidden by the Moon-man as he makes love to her. –Ray Norris, 2007, Australian Aboriginal Astronomy
The Moon is a man. The Sun is awoman.
You know where this is going.
The Sun wakes each morning
decorates herself, spills a bit of Ocher
on the clouds, stains them red.
Lights a torch made from the stringy-bark tree.
Takes a long walk to the West. Our man,
the Moon, knows a good thing when he sees it.
Chases her across the sky.
Moon wanting. Sunrunning.
Her hands are busy with the torch
until sunset when off come her feathers and
her beads. Ocher dusts the West with
clay fired by day. Luck and light,
today the Moon catches theSun.
Wedding invitations are sent byshadow.
People come from Poland, from Japan,
from farms and the arms oflovers.
Bringing wines and expensivecameras
as gifts. Chasing holes inthe clouds to
glimpse the bride and her lustygroom.
People expect thefantastic.
Still, they are not prepared forit.
An hour of the Moon rubbing outthe Sun.
Foreplay is a pledge innearness.
Even the tiniest crescent of heris still so brilliant.
Finally, one eye swallows theother.
The Moon and Sun shutter thisplay.
Call it hide in the dark. Call it totality.
Call it a cosmic peep show. Aswe watch
our makers of gravity make love,another kind
of sight is ushered in – adiamond blue-white
seen only in subtext. Thisslick foreign narrator
shows all the props to be wiredby maniacs,
the curtains to be made of mesh.
Did we really want to see thebride
with her macramé gown pulleddown,
moon ravenous, his hands bony,hers fiery?
Yes. Oh, yes. As detailsrichen, people
make noises in the backs oftheir throats, caught
beside themselves in unexpectedclimax.
One old farmer brought hisfolding chair,
wore indifference like a hairychest
handed out clichés about theweather,
until totality when he criedout “holy shit,
holy shit, holy shit….” He was not alone. All around
were mewls of men and women inthe throes
of a tryst they had planned, butwas more
than they asked for. Clapping, and laughter
a bawdy audience, the mostprimitive of shows.
Unexpected means a comingwithout warning.
Well, isn’t that always how itis?
(After burner image –
a blanket of discreteness,
radiant streamers and Venus.)
BuildingMy Boat from Kindling
I want to hunt thewhale, hunger, single-mindedly,
in pursuit of hisheft. I want to be obsessed, watch the days
grow long, forgetmy teeth until I taste them
rotting in myforgotten mouth.
Let my mind growwild and feel the whale’s
impossible form, abulk of blinding whiteness bearing down,
ever diving behindmy eyelids in the moments
when I can sleep.
But if I go to sea,who will make the children
wear theircoats? Who will cover them withthe right weight
of blankets in thenight? While I am at sea,
foaming,
riding whitecapsof unlikely creation, no one will act as that
necessarybasin in which cloth is washed with water,
bringing out thebright emptiness needed
daily in ourworld.
Hours ago, beforethis day roused itself from the metronome
of motion, my feetmade their way blind against a path.
From across unkemptfields and empty lots, I heard
a donkey make itsnoises
against the night. I understood its inability
to choose whatsound would form when gums parted
andmuzzle made the joke of noise
assigned to itsform.
Of all the ironyof nature, the creation of marsupials, the birth
of animalsaddicted to bamboo, the winding of winds
that turn wrong inthe sky, there is woman.
Every morning sheshows the seeds
how to suckair and exhale,
how to growstraight in the sun. Oh, the lack of mercy,
as one womb afteranother fills. The helium of dreams leak
a hissing trailinto the sky. But I am building
my boat fromkindling,
breaking the crib,chopping the cupboard
that held thespices. Sticks stolen in the morning
and bent at nightform a hollow to carry me out
beyond thebreakers.
Come Here
When the soup isn’tworth warming, come here.
Arms needn’t echothe emptiness of bowls.
Let my bodybreathe a boundary around you.
The easy animal ofme is outside time. Listen.
Hear the lull ofmy blood being honeyed into bone.
Within the lushnessof each other’s limbs,
our torsos tellstories, singing skin to skin and
the sharp surpriseof eye teeth bared by joy.
Come here, bloomas an instinct, unfold
like insect wingsto reveal this gift –
warmth in the body– both balm and source
of perennial alms.Touches, riches,
uncountable,unaccountable.
Entering the Barren Plains
Against my limbicwill, I’ve decided to have
no more babies, tobegin a self-exile where I
wander the landbeyond the pastures of motherhood.
I’m not barren – simply twenty-first century sensible,
with a secretdesire for more.
Rich in inheritorsalready, two small-limbed mammals
clamber about myhouse with their fine heads of hair
hanging commas inthe foyer of each moment
a-rococo with thepop pop passion of children.
Yet the terrain ofthis world can’t contain my yearning.
The crotch of themountains makes my nipples swell.
The contours ofthe land command the beast in me
to yield. Iboth fear and crave a magical rape.
If only the angelsof desire could summon the soil
to rise up into asemen-spitting serpent,
I’d warm mystill-ripe uterus full again.
But no. I canalready hear the broad-stemmed
shield of grassesweaving a spell on my eggs
to stop their freefall towards fertility,
to keep me frompopulating this land with more beauty.
Hush-a-bye body – there will be no more babies.
Hush-a-bye grasses– never to be crushed
by the small feetof my youngest unborn.
Hush-a-bye wildviable mountains – have mercy–
close your legsand hide the shining crotch of life
from my greedysoul.
Loveand Loss in the Hour Before School
A small moth
with moon-colored wings
struts onyx eyes
and thread-like legs
across my son’s palm.
My six-year old
gently sets the moth
on his pillow to get dressed.
Then picks it up again
and smiles
as powder wings
brush his face, explore
folds of clothes.
“He loves me,”
says my son.
But I hear
“I love him.”
I nod. “Maybe moth
would be happier outside.”
Minutes later,
I find him weeping,
one hand hanging
over the balcony. “He dropped”
he says, “one wing was hurt.
He couldn’t fly away.”
But it’s time to brush teeth,
get socks on
for first grade
where small sums and
sight words wait.
As the toothbrush
glides over baby enamel,
his eyes close. I think he sees
the moth fall again
from his hand
because fresh tears appear.
Placebo
Powerful, thisnothing,
this sugar pill ofpermission.
Smaller than abutton, slipping
through holes ofthe possible.
A meretwo-calorie,
lactose-coatedwhim
mustering thetroops
by blondesuggestion.
A Poem AboutCountry Music
I will not start off singing about all the satisfied menI’ve left behind.
Instead, I’ll confess to not loving trains. I love the tracks.
I’ve also been laid down on the thirsty ground from coast tocoast
in a constant struggle to stay straight and narrow.
Jennings knew, thedevil made me do it the first time.
The second time I did it on my own.
Now the harmonica comes in with a twangy, far-off sound
to get the audience prepped for stories about Mexico
where I got high and got the clap. But in my version
there are no prison walls and “the man” is not the sheriff
because man itself is my prison. That personal pronoun of containment –
“he” is a jar with smooth edges. It looks useful
but put something in and it becomes airless fast.
So I stand at the edge of a field tired with an overdue baby
having gone without gin for nine months now. I can’t make it
much longer because my warden is on a tractor or on the road
or sleeping with a rose of a different name.
The field before me is fallow all on its own merit,
coming of age craftily using the calcium left to it from before.
I can do that too, take the fossil in my teeth, know losslike seasons,
turn and till, lie still, listen for the bass laying a rhythm down
on the tracks. I remember my first dance
at the Crystal Chandelier. Couldn’t believe it was legal
to hold a man in my arms like that in front of everyone.
No one paying any mind to the ropes of taut muscle
in his shoulders and back, so close and moving.
Breath in my ear. Not knowingthen, not knowing now
how a thing can seem so clear (tall grass, cool river, legs like light,
never mind about eyes) just before it disappears.
in brown-backed madness
seeking out the clumping food
one mind on the ground
for too long I’ve been part
of a hollow bones collective
same calamus, some quiver
if flight, it’s a forever
banking into the flock
to outmaneuver hawks
not shearing from the shoal
what of the gradient sky,
the crumbs seeded higher
where light geysers?
articulate neck
hear beak strike metal
sharpen on galvanized steel
I’m ready to take the fire
that reflection of me
burning eye, guilt
no match for desire
ladder of light leads on
no more clotted berries
no more grit
only heat
only a bringing
of brilliance and burn
my promise – to
ransom this sphere
a purchase
clawed from chorus
SomeThings Are Easy to Forgive
Throwing away a receipt,
getting angry,
failing to make the pie crust flaky.
Others make it onto a memorable list:
leaving the passports at home,
running a red light,
drinking too much at N’s wedding.
But what about the tragedies:
growing black hair in odd places,
correcting the grammar of a person
stammering “I love you,”
or turning away from flowers
as they open their little calamities
on the light?
Eye Witness
Sept 23, 2010 Headline “Train Crushes Elephants inIndia After Animals Try to Rescue Calves Stuck in the Tracks”
Near midnight, the metal crushesGanesh. The pupil
of the moon dilates on adrenaline,lamps down
on six wild elephants freshlydead, or dying, while
the herd blares distress. In a snarl of railway gauge,
the freight train to Guwhati endswith engine carving trunk.
Two are still breathing. Someoneshouts make way.
A screaming match between traindriver and forest ranger.
Twice the speed limit! I braked as soon as I could!
Ruin rivets voices onto the plateof night.
*
Day dawns like a damnation. People bring sandalwood,
small statues, their own bodiestransformed
into keratin duffels ofsuffering. The nightmareblooms
as a baby elephant is found stillstanding, motherless now,
hiding in a drain of theplantation. Tea bushes,
also voiceless, buoy in green whatwasn’t seen
in the monochrome dark. Before us, he slumps and gives up.
Blue-gray infant eyes so close tothe surface, unhusked.
Witnessing this levers me wideopen with a tool,
sharp as guilt, spilling all mysilver decimals.
*
Tonight, the pachyderm parentsderailed Indian trade, briefly.
They slowed humanity to shieldtheir babies with living tonnage
when stuck on the tracks mistookfor the forest path. Twenty-two
months in the womb, but only amoment on the Bengal-Assam line
to undo. The industrial revelation feels like this: thereis no safe
passage. Fresh leaves on forest trees arenot free to reach
past these metal meridians ofprogress. Indian Rail forgets itsarchitects
the way the future neglects itspast, well-trained hides hauling
sleepers and ties. A weed of a man wearing mid-morningtrauma
weeps on the sun-hot rails. At first, I hope he is the driverof the train
re-living impact. No, he is only a reporter fromKolkata. He doesn’t
say he knelt, and photographed thebaby still alive. But hedid.
Grate your owncheese.
Refuse insurance.
Drink water.
Make eye contact.
(I mean, look
your lover in theeye.)
Greet small withceremony.
Meet big the sameway.
Sew a flag of old undies.
Hoist yourluggage,
unzipped,
up a mast.
Read anautobiography.
Raise children.
Watch a bird.
Sand corners.
Occupy a border.
(I mean, movecalmly
near your edges.)
Shield somethinginjured
with your entirebody,
hands wide.
Turn over stones.
Make room.
Then, after all these things,
Speak.
My I
I is for Identity – the straight of its shank, the narrow
of its nastiness.I played its angles with transparency –
a life-long, not-for-profittribute to gravity,
as if gravityneeded to fake interest
in star-signs,last names and last chances.
I was born on thetenure-track,
got a PhD inpassion at age seven.
The thesis was ajuniper berry pinched
betweenfingernails damned by dirt,
blessed by theincense of astringency.
I was baptizedlate into humanity
by the births ofchildren, sanitized by
sweet-n-souramniotic fluids, their constant demands
for more ofme. The pain of their small limbs
carved deep intothe wood of me.
I travel towardthe final number in my series,
when death willun-define my cursor’s point,
when my CV willrevert onto a letterhead of freckles
whose only entryis my life’s most sincere wish –
I wanted a puppybefore I could talk.
The imprint ofthat longing being all that’s left.
My one ambition indeath is to turn the I on its side,
ride it out pastthe atmosphere where gravity’s tide
turns my I’s everyeffort into satellites of concentricity.
I will ride andride, intercept the juniper-scent then
overcome theeclipsing waves of light
until I outrun eventhe bow-shock of my birth.
Slip
I hereby give permission
for my child (blank) to go to(blank).
I release the school
of all liability.
I give my full, uninformedapproval
and consent for this event
I know nothing about
but hope it’s safe.
(Please sign the lower half.
Return by Friday.)
In granting this,
I assume full responsibility
for any damage
to person or property
caused by my child.
I also authorize
any procedures
deemed necessary
by a physician or dentist
cowboy or exorcist.
I, the undersigned, understand
no child will be sent
home unaccompanied.
(My check is attached.)
NoUnauthorized Access
Blonde, skin-loving,
seed-hiding stalks of grasses
are thigh-high
with heads split like snake tongues.
Those are just the grasses.
There are thistles, also,
juiced to the burr with milk
and ants attending aphids.
But I am not allowed
to walk there.
Restoration
is in progress.
I can only watch
as the wind bends them low.
The fluid –
always stronger than the form.
The Sun isan Egg
When I put my ear
against the bomb pause of its potential
against its lighter than light shell
the yolk, it spoke to me.
“Hatchling” it called me,
but you are the egg, I frowned.
I heard a sound
caught in the tree branches;
it may have been light dappling.
“Hatch” the Sun said, clear as day.
I pouted, put off by the imperative.
Nature gets high-handed at times,
a guard in collections.
But when the grade A gas
sucked in fiercely,
(an indention in age known from candling)
a flash of recognition set in,
what could I do but blaze?
I move backwards this time
to where my daughter
was born. As a salmon
confused by the turn
from salt to fresh,
I batter my sides in purpose,
cross yet another ocean
towards the known,
but altered, molt
of memory.
I land close enough
to smell the tang
of fennel grass,
swallow the afternoon whole
while hope shows herself.
“Here” she doesn’t say in words,
“it’s just three steps from m to p.”
Hope comes home.
The sun comes off the water
splinters the air
in a gold violence.
I feel a closeness
that won’t turn away, a tinsel
static that no one speaks of.
Look how often
we need only three spaces to close
any distance;
my daughter to the cliff,
an upriver splash over stone,
a lover so close
to oncoming traffic,
and these three steps from me to you.
How I want this;
to close all the distances,
to bring things together again
that I can’t name,
to touch the tinsel,
to lay it on the rocks
where the salmon see it
glinting from the stream,
to have our battered sides
reflect something -not glory,
but glorious.
Letter tothe Seamstress
A seamstress makes her-self a visionary by untethering hersenses. All forms, madness &knowledge – she pulls through her metal eye as a dyed line and binds innew shapes. She allows life,names, stripes and petals, while drinking the force of sunlight. If she should stitch herself a newuniverse, clap her exit and note the knot. Another with fierce tools will soon rip seams off theseremnants and start fresh.*
*This calligram is a variation of Rimbaud’s ‘Lettre duVoyant’.
My boobs
don’t need a job;
they already work
for me.
Credits:
Portrait of Aimee A. Norton,Watercolour on Paper, 2008, by Justine Frischmann.
“Romeo Nation” and “SomewhereHere, a Spell of Indifference” were first published by Mascara Literary Review,Issue 8, 2010, University of Newcastle (Australia)
“Building MyBoat From Kindling” was first published in Leviathan: A Journal ofMelville Studies, March, 2013 issue, John Hopkins University Press (USA)
“Come Here”, “Placebo”, and“Decisions for a Quiet Revolt” in SOFTBLOW Journal, online, 2011(Singapore)
“Letter to theSeamstress” in Rabbit Poetry, #3, The Visual Issue, January 2012,Melbourne (Australia)