Issue 8

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Poetry

Powers of Recuperation
by Adrienne Rich

1.

A woman of the citizen party—what’s that—
is writing history backward

her body   the chair she sits in
to be abandoned  repossessed

The old, crusading, raping, civil, great, phony, holy, world,
     second world, third world, cold, dirty, lost, on drugs,

gangrenous, maiming, class
war lives on

a done matter she might have thought
ever undone though   plucked

from before her birthyear
and that hyphen coming after

She’s old, old, the incendiary
woman

endless beginner

whose warped wraps you shall find in graves
and behind glass   plundered



2.

Streets empty now   citizen rises   shrugging off
her figured shirt  pulls on her dark generic garment    sheds
identity inklings   watch, rings, ear-studs
now to pocket her flashlight    her tiny magnet
shut down heater    finger a sleeping cat
lock inner, outer door   insert
key in crevice    listen once twice
to the breath of the neighborhood
take temperature of the signs   a bird
scuffling  a frost settling

… you left that meeting around two A.M. I thought
someone should walk with you

Didn’t think then I needed that

years ravel out   and now

who’d be protecting whom


I left the key in the old place
in case


3.

Spooky those streets of minds
shuttered against shatter

articulate those walls
pronouncing rage and need

fuck the cops   come jesus
blow me again

Citizen walking cat-wise
close to the walls

heat of her lungs leaving
its trace upon the air

fingers her tiny magnet
which for the purpose of drawing

particles together will have to do
when as they say the chips are down


4.

Citizen at riverbank   seven bridges
Ministers-in-exile with their aides
underneath dreaming limb to limb

conspiring by definition

Bridges  trajectories arched
in shelter   rendezvous

two banks to every river   two directions
to every bridge
twenty-eight chances

every built thing has its unmeant purpose


5.

Every built thing with its unmeant
meaning    unmet purpose

every unbuilt thing

child squatting    civil
engineer   devising

by kerosene flare   in mud
possible tunnels

carves in cornmeal mush   irrigation
canals by index finger

all new learning looks at first
like chaos

the tiny magnet throbs
in citizen’s pocket


6.

Bends under the arc walks bent listening for chords and codes
bat-radar-pitched or twanging
off rubber bands and wires tin can telephony

to scribble testimony by fingernail and echo
her documentary alphabet still evolving

Walks up on the bridge   wind-whipped      roof and trajectory
shuddering under her catpaw tread
one of seven

built things holds her suspended
between desolation

and the massive figure on unrest’s verge1
pondering the unbuilt city

cheek on hand and glowing eyes and
skirted knees apart


2007

1. See Melancolia I, engraving by Albrecht Dürer, 1514

Adrienne Rich is the author of many books, most recently the poetry collection Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth and A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society (both from W. W. Norton). David Sellars's Piedoxen Press is publishing a limited hand-set edition of her poem "Letters Censored, Shredded, Returned to Sender, or Judged Unfit to Send" with etched prints by Nancy Grossman.

Read more in Issue 8

After the Wreck: Naomi J. Williams on Historical Fictions and Fictional Histories
Source Material:
Sara Majka Considers Booking a Room
Powers of Recuperation by Adrienne Rich
Trans-Neptunian Object by Suzanne Buffam
The Blackberries by Francis Ponge
The Mupandawana Dancing Champion by Petina Gappah
Fiction Li Ling by Atsushi Nakajima