in the antediluvian island
in the primordial swamp
Hardwood was already my friend
The porcelain basin of memory is black
I spit down it brushing my feral tooth.
_____________________
‘A double? oh really badly’
I have a
double a self I can’t stand
I was discovered by primordial Columbus
and became his land?
Cliché says Hardwood.
_____________________
Wanting the real
and as a dream is a dream
I try to remember something:
the trees at Blythe
at night, going home
inside the steel cab of a pickup,
road lined with athol trees. salty, drab.
Home gone to feels empty
a little shakily and that’s
more like a dream than a memory.
No I want real and dreamed to be fused into the real
rip off this shroud of division of my poem from my life.
______________________
I am a reflex an E for effort
(what I can’t stand)–
equal to a shroudperson.
______________________
Eating eels near the Loire I learn to slither
not between poles but being the one pole the river.
______________________
Now that I’ve visited an étang
I always had visited one–
I knew these swamps when the stars.
An island of Sumer, no dead other
dark woman or enemy-maker.
From Grave of Light (Wesleyan University Press), by Alice Notley © 2006.
