Sediments of Santa Monica
A left margin watches the sea floor approach
It takes 30 million years
It is the first lover
More saints for Augustine's mother
A girl in red shorts shakes Kafka's
The Trial free of some sand
A left margin watches the watcher from Dover
After the twentieth century these cliffs
Looked like ribbons on braids or dreads
A dream had come right over
With a sort of severe leakage
Ah love let us be true to one another
Went down to the ferris wheel
God's Rolodex
There were neon spikes around everyone
Like the Virgin's spikes
Old punk's mohawk Evidence of inner fire
Rode throwing words off Red current
Light swearing
Ah love The century
Had become a little drippy at the end
We're still growing but the stitches hurt Let
us be
True to one another for the world
Easy on the myths now
Make it up Sleep well
Sad Cookies
The Staff brings in the scrolly silver urn
Jefferson written all over it
Cookies arranged in a circle like the Irish Peace Accord
The kind with the weird red jam in the center
The First Lady talks about the arts
There is no president of cookies
They have the kind of steady thinking
That could accommodate theory
Pssst eagle
Come down off that wall
There are choirs behind the next day
Blanchot: The poets destiny is to expose himself
To the force of the undetermined
Airline magazine from 1967:
Exaggerate your uniqueness
Expose yourself to things you might avoid
Can't walk in a circle because the corridors of power
Can't not look because of JFK
A third of the invisible can go through closed doors if you let it
The First Lady talks about the national cabin
Think of the Enquirer headline:
SWITCHED GIRLS WILL STAY PUT FAMILIES AGREE
Double Jeopardy category Sweet Nothings for $200
Sweet nothing surrounded by anything
What is a poets destiny?
The Rise of the Napa Hills
The sea has receded a little. Mild layers stack up
without panic, like e-mail. Twin frenzied suns watch the ocean
sediments settle under Oakville Grocery. Flittery
strings tied to the tops of young vines shimmer two versions of
the actual: red, white. The curfew vintner walks below,
tapping smooth metal vats with a spoon. He asks them the twelve
questions: Did you love your life? How 'bout now? Can you recite
the table of sunsets? Did the weather wait for you? Did
you wait back? When he shook before the world did you shake too?
Did you fall in the milky sunshine? Do you hear their
gritty theories still? Would you like a drink? Can you live in
two directions with the border guards? You're not answering.
Why didn't you fight more? Didn't you love being bad?
BRENDA HILLMAN
is the author of six collections of poetry and three chapbooks. She received many
awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial
Award for Poetry. She lives in Kensington, California and teaches at St. Mary's
College in Moraga.
The above selections are from Brenda Hillman's new book, Cascadia
(Wesleyan University Press 2001).
ForPoetry |
