TO HAVE CAUSED THE QUAKE, TO HAVE TORN IT OPEN

We walked to where we thought it might be best
to see the water. Surely there was still some
secret in the world.

We walked to where I found what I found buried,
in the dirt, beneath a patch of reeds:
the rounded head of what must have once lived

tucked inside the earth. And, like those fish
that live in caves, I saw it had no holes for eyes,
because of course it didn't need them.

Surely, it had been a thing that lived
by touch alone. And because it was small
I took it. Because it fit inside my pocket

I carried it, feeling, as we walked in the dark
the knobs where the eyes would've been,
feeling, as we made our way around the rim.

And so I took what I found and set it on a ledge
where every day I knew the sun would bleach it.
And every day I went to see

what the light had done. I can't say for sure
just what it was: a skull, a hole, a rounded pearl, a tiny orb
inside of which small winds had once been turning.

But every night I could feel it
moving farther from the earth.

__

AT NIGHT I SING

On days it seems I've floated far
the world seems far away from me.
I stare back. Rain clinks
across the window like a spider
wearing heels. I lie on my belly
and run my hand along the pane,
hear the world the way I hear
the most curled-in space in the far
back corner of a conch's curled shell,
which is the world, twisted,
to its utmost point. The world is a small
black lake, studded with stars.
I lie belly down at the entrance
called the bed and listen
to the smooth turned worlds
of your head. My hand on your face
I listen to the night's jawed yowl.
So it's true: I've gone far
in this boat in my heart. I lie
on my belly, press the glass
to my lips. So this is the world,
I think, as I sink my oar in.
I love the world, I sing, twisting it.

__

I think both of these poems were born on walks. I grew up walking in the woods, on the beach, often finding things left behind with my mom. One summer afternoon I found a perfect animal skull in the woods. I wanted to keep it. One day, I remember, it was in July, I had friends over. The skull had been on a table on the side-deck. In the morning it was smashed. This memory came back to me, and I wrote about it. I was thinking of Laura Kasischke's poem "After Ken Burns," which begins "The beautiful plate I cracked in half as I wrapped it in tissue paper—/as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it." To me it seemed to speak to fault, to taking ownership of what's been broken. It seemed defiant, in a way.

The second poem I wrote during the early days of quarantine. I suppose this poem has a kind of defiance in it also, in its pronouncement. To love the world seems impossible; and in telling about the world, you can't help but warp and twist it... I think this poem has the momentary defiance of belief. It hovers around an iambic line. There's something maybe innocent in that sound, coupled with something haunting in the sense of the world being warped, of being the one who warps it.