The Under World - by Melissa Kwasny

1
I had an idea midwinter. It was ruby, glistening. It was garnet,
menstrual. I would have it on my table, centered, a red rocking
thing to measure time. Which doesn't move, they say, which is
an illusion. Unemployed: traveling to the woodpile and coming
back with sticks. I know the shrunken world is an experiment.
Bird shell caught in the teeth. So far I have waited mole-eyed, the
body puffy. What huge desperation devises these tests? I open
my eyes when I haev been asked to keep them closed. I peek and
then the fascists come down on me. I have tried to be a good
therapeutic model, to choose to be happy, that jingling of coins.
But there is no room for heart in the cold earth place.

2
The world circles around me with its pack of lies. Shall I give it one last
chance? And another? ...
One lives the life one was meant to, or one doesn't...

7
Up in the air. A peculiar phrase. What does it mean that nothing's
landed? ...

9
When I broke with the earth, in grief, the animals still gathered. The iris
skimmed the pond, turning it to azure. I felt the coolness on my arms.
Re-pressed. Implying the property of buoyancy. Re-petition. Implying
the king or queen might still say yes. Though the soil still clings to me.
Though I drag my bootleg pain. Though I still believe in perpetrator and
victim. Deep need, I am bending into you. Pulverized by being. Nothing
else will wake me. Bite deep my driving hand. If I am progeny of thorns,
I am also mother of a sea of roses. If I am sea, I am anaphora. Casting a
calm above the undertow. Speak to me, work, or I will be forever lonely.
Help me to remember who I am.

-From Reading Novalis in Montana
* * * * *

What huge desperation, indeed. It is not midwinter yet. I don't think I have had an idea in a long while. Even whilst I think about choosing to do this something, I am doing something else.

How does one know if one is living the life one was meant to?

If I have not landed, I don't want to. Or maybe I do. I am indeterminate, flapping invisible wings.

I am utterly defeated by being, she says. What can remember who I am?

* * * * *