Strategy Response, Week 11

One technique that Jillian Wiese uses throughout her collection is the act of naming and what is also implicit with naming—which is claiming. In “Below Water” the speaker notices “you staring at the railroad tracks / along my spine, and I thought / Mine, mine.” In “Notes on the Body (2)” the speaker states that “they call me patient”—in “Body as Harbor” the speaker points out “here is a painting of a harbor, / I will call you Captain, there is / your ship”—in “The Body in Pain” we see “This is the spine )” and then this is not only a declaration of naming—this is the spine—but there is an object given to become a embodiment of the spine in text form. The whole collection, of course, acts as an embodiment to fill the physical lack the speaker possesses as an amputee. And it is not a revelation to claim that a poet’s job to name, yet, this collection seems to want to be reclaiming or claiming more than words. What I am still trying to connect in my own mind as reader and as practicing poet is how the collection goes beyond the sheer act of naming and what is being created out of absence and how that is being done textually. What complicates this discovery for me seems to be the element of gender and the powers of gender that are also at play. In particular, “Abscission” bestows upon the male “you” in the poem the act of naming: “Your favorite post-coital pastime / is nicknaming my scars.” Here, the speaker seems to give back to the male the historical and/or Biblical role of namer and relinquishes her authoritative position. What I think enables the speaker to regain power, however, is then the males throughout throughout the collection fall into the feminine position of questioning and generating cyclical states of being: Do you sleep with it on? Do you bathe with it on? Will you take it off in front of me? Is it all right if I touch it? (“The Old Questions”) Just like our previous discussions on the rejection of the traditional, patriarchal linear-ness of poetry by Estes and Fagan, we engage here with another role reversal and possible rejection with Weise being the namer. Even after several reads of this collection I am still trying to parse my way through what is going on. I feel that is maybe because it is not textual apparent as say Fagan or Estes—but none the less still as equally demanding of our attention.

Free Entry 2, Week 11

Cow Mysticism

The great philosophers of this world eat
green tomatoes and graze among the dormant
orange groves. I'm on philosopher watch.
Day three: no such luck. The fallen oranges
haven't been touched by a tongue in days.
The sandy grass begs for hooves
to trample wisdom into their blades,
to postulate the coming of water,
or the clumsy hand that drops a cigarette
to end it all. I want to be level
with the nostrils of wisdom.
To ask the rotating chew if having four feet
is better than two. If a tail is better
than this sack of hair on my head
or if this talking world means more
than a grazing one. I'm on philosopher watch.
So far not even a bell, not even a rustle.

Free Entry 1, Week 11

The lung of Cuba
resembles so much the explosion
of sand when lightning strikes.
How this is possible
is only known by true Cubans,
they ones who stood
on street corners when missiles
threatened to ruin dinner.
The brackish wheels of the 1950s
roadster, now used as a taxi,
tremble with the quake of sand.
A young boy, never having seen
lightning before, emits a flooding
of tears down his sun-blistered cheeks.
Just lightning, his father exhales,
surrendering an answer
as brackish as the wheels of the roadster.
The boy breathes in the burning air
and gets a lungful of glass, or what would be
glass had the storm only struck a little
harder. Later that night,
at dinner, the boy asked his father
when the sunshine would stop,
when sand would become the only way to see.
Words blistered inside the father's mouth,
fighting departure from his lips.
Cuba will never be without
sunshine, he said, we ride out our days
as lungs in each other's chest.
You in mine and i in your's.
This will be possible, but only known by us.

Improv 2, Week 11

Abscission
-Jillian Weise

Your favorite post-coital position
is nicknaming my scars.
The name for the railroad track
along my back--Engine.

The dots on my wrists from IVs
Spot. These are not-me, the not-leg
beside the bed for you to trip over
like the beautiful word: abscission,

to cut off, in botany, to shed leaves.
Medical terms must communicate
clearly, I tell you, but that doesn't stop
you from asking what it feels like

when your hand is here, now here
over here. I think of the wives
of the twenty thousand masons
who raised the Taj Mahal. And how,

when it was finished, the emperor
ordered a mass amputation of thumbs
so the craftsmen could never build
a more perfect mausoleum. Did their

wives ask question while playing
with the remaining fingers of their
husbands' hands? Did they ask, Can
you feel my hand here? How about now?


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And I don’t stop you from asking why I exit
the room directly after sex to shine your clocks.
Nor do I require you to ring me after five days
in which we lay on my grandmother’s quilt,

naked except for socks and my tiger’s eye necklace.
I trust in the shape of your mouth as you formulate
words that sound like stay, eyelids, peeled peaches.
We give into this clockworked habit of apologies

when it comes to departures but I pale at the hard luck
of settling. I arouse in you myself and word of mouth.
What remains as whispers is everything you find ugly
about me, but you are drunk on my body so we part

post-coitally clean as an abscission. Nothing is clean.
We learn that from our mothers and what we also learn
is that you should never over-stay your welcome.
I’m running out of polish and you are running out

of clocks. I’ve buffed the two in the dinning room
eight times this week. They are starting to know my hands
as well as you do and that I always wink when I’m through.
Let me tell you that by my birthday I’ll be gone
and you’ll have to peel peaches with somebody new.

Improv 1, Week 11

Introductions
-Jillian Weise

After we're introduced ourselves
with gin and tonic and jazz,
a woman asks to read our palms.
We decide that we are worth
at least one night together/

In the bed without sheets,
the room with blank walls
and cobwebbed windows, a green
light bulb shines, reminds you
of the ocean.

You tell me about your house
catching fire, your parents dying
while you gambled in Las Vegas.
I tell you about airport alarms set off
by metal rods in my back.

You trace the scar along me spine
and I imagine what it must feel like.
We determine the arrangement of parts,
hip bones and shoulders, your Adam's
apple to my nose.

We decide all of this without speaking.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


We meet like two anatomy charts
rubbing together, wedged between
the introduction is our thighs.
In the bed of my backseat we stumble
over buttons and regrets of current
location. Packed in the far corner

of the church lot, the street lamp
fails to reach us in our mission.
There must be a punishment for this—
for this moment when you watch me
tug out my tampon and then I smile

at your eyes as they watch my hands.
I’m convinced this moment will be
goose-fleshed, robbed of cinematography,
but this is better than any movie.
We ration our limbs, verb each other,

hope the cops don’t cruise by.
You crack the window to let the night
in and cover us like sheets. This all reminds
me of where we are not. That somewhere
outside the car, next to a puddle, is my tampon.

So this is love, this is how we meet.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 11

"God wants you to name a baby after him."
--Baby name book

"When you're in love the whole world is Welsh"

"Break hearts with liquid nitrogen."

"The art of turtle stacking."
--www.buzzfeed.com

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
--Steven Wright

Free Entry 2, Week 10

Let’s bury the hammer and nail the steel
Door to pratice our balance. Once the pond
overflows the dam we can build a new.
We can sling and lug wood like we were built
for hard labor, though I really rather tea time
or paint-by-number a felt unicorn, but only use
aqua. Florida uses aqua to line the floor of pools.
I know this because I’ve seen them all with my toes.
Once a team of men built a door in the bottom
of a pool. They tired to hammer and nail the door
without removing the water. I waved to them
from above the surface. Turns out they were drowning.
So when take the last bit of aqua to the hoof
of my horse I think of the men nailing the bottom.