{ you're gonna bring yourself down. }

[delga]

Five things meme! zeitheist asked me for my top 5 female characters and my top 5 pieces of poetry. As it turns out, this is a repeat question, so I'm going to amend it slightly by adding 'this year' to each query. This makes a surprising amount of difference!

--

In no particular order, because that is actually more difficult than naming foods I enjoy eating (= almost impossible).

01. The Opposite of Nostalgia by Eric Gamalinda

You are running away from everyone
who loves you,
from your family,
from old lovers, from friends.

They run after you with accumulations
of a former life, copper earrings,
plates of noodles, banners
of many lost revolutions.

You love to say the trees are naked now
because it never happens
in your country. This is a mystery
from which you will never

recover. And yes, the trees are naked now,
everything that still breathes in them
lies silent and stark
and waiting. You love October most

of all, how there is no word
for so much splendor.
This, too, is a source
of consolation. Between you and memory

everything is water. Names of the dead,
or saints, or history.
There is a realm in which
--no, forget, it,

it’s still too early to make anyone understand.
A man drives a stake
through his own heart
and afterwards the opposite of nostalgia

begins to make sense: he stops raking the leaves
and the leaves take over
and again he has learned
to let go.

This is a poem about many things, and I discover new ones every time I read it. Of course, I first loved it because Between you and memory // everything is water.

02. Marrying the Violence by Marty McConnell

I have taken the blueprint of your back for granted
as if the sidewalk were not an altar
and the sound of the shower not a hurricane
bearing down – there is no ceremony for this.
the night goes on in spite of the rain, much
like the mail. make me a bullet of a mouth,
sex love and money on the radio. not a bullet,
a gun. not a gun, a harbor. to hold you, against
this, against the night with its sirens and batons,
I fly down the block to you and the lights, in
harm’s way, all sixteen muscles of my tongue
pulled, meat for the men who don’t love you.
my love, ink is fool's armor. your good luck
works on no one in uniform. if it's true
that bone is harder than steel, make me
a building, a garden of calcium
and mineral in bloom, deadbolt
of a spine, you coming home whole,
the apartment of my head on your bulletless
chest / each time the cry of fight goes up
on the street I remember your hand, the man
rocking back on his heels, his mouth
a sidelong oval shocked into quiet
at last, his pale hand torn from your forearm --
love, lay your burden down, here, tell me how
to make this body a safehouse and not
a prison, how hold your hand when its every lifting
is an act of self-defense, how take the knife from you
and not call it murder, or surrender – the cabdriver,
the cop, the woman gripping her purse
on the L train conspire -- you are already
a weapon. I am no building, no shield,
less than cotton between the violent night
and your skin, less than teeth
ground down to bonedust
small, white as I am.

I discovered youtube videos of Marty McConnell reading her own work and what on the page reads somewhat awkwardly comes across much better in performance. My favourites are the poems from the Saints cycle (and also Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell which contains that amazing juxtaposition of "your problems are papier maché puppets you made or bought because the vendor was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him") but this is one I'd never read before this year. I enjoy the violence of words a lot. I like something that feels like you got smacked in the teeth. Make of that what you will.

03. Letter by Franz Wright

January 1998

I am not acquainted with anyone
there, if they spoke to me
I would not know what to do.
But so far nobody has, I know
I certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t participate, I’m not allowed;
I just listen, and every morning
have a moment of such happiness, I breathe
and breathe until the terror returns. About the time
when they are supposed to greet one another
two people actually look into each other’s eyes
and hold hands a moment, but
the church is so big and the few who are there
are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.
I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical corpse
who is said to be love
and who spoke the world
into being, before coming here
to be tortured and executed by it.
I don’t know what I am doing there. I do
notice the more I lose touch
with what I previously saw as my life
the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes—
it is infinite. What we experience
as space, the sky
that is, the sun, the stars
is intimate and rather small by comparison.
When I step outside the ugliness is so shattering
it has become dear to me, like a retarded
child, precious to me.
If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.

Franz Wright is such a recent favourite but his poems seem both so fragile and so potent. What we experience [...] is intimate and rather small by comparison. See what I mean?

04. Glow by Ada Limón

and I have always been a jealous girl,
but when he’d come home with a 4am
stomp in his boots and undress to bed,
he was fully there, fully in the room,
my sleeping body made awake, awake,
and there was a gentleness to this,
a long opening that seemed to join us
in the saddest hour.

This is not the whole poem because it has been taken down. I am sorely, sorely gutted because I loved it. I mean, I read it over and over again when I first bookmarked it. I think I may have shared it with a couple of people but I don't have a copy of it. If I happened to send it to you, and you still have it, please, please email it to me, oh god. What I remember about this one is that tug of physicality it held. Limón's best work is like that, slowly reaching into your ribcage and pulling hard.

05. Phantom Limbs by Anne Michaels

"The face of the city changes more quickly, alas! than the mortal heart."
—Charles Baudelaire

So much of the city
is our bodies. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of feeling,
like phantom limbs.

Even the city carries ruins in its heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

Through the yellow hooves
of the ginkgo, parchment light;
in that apartment where I first
touched your shoulders under your sweater,
that October afternoon you left keys
in the fridge, milk on the table.
The yard - our moonlight motel -
where we slept summer's hottest nights,
on grass so cold it felt wet.
Behind us, freight trains crossed the city,
a steel banner, a noisy wall.
Now the hollow diad
floats behind glass
in office towers also haunted
by our voices.

Few buildings, few lives
are built so well
even their ruins are beautiful.
But we loved the abandoned distillery:
stone floors cracking under empty vats,
wooden floors half rotted into dirt;
stairs leading nowhere; high rooms
run through with swords of dusty light.
A place the rain still loved, its silver paint
on rusted things that had stopped moving it seemed, for us.
Closed rooms open only to weather,
pungent with soot and molasses,
scent-stung. A place
where everything too big to take apart
had been left behind.

Apocapoem! When I read this, I thought of that McBryde poem about the emaciated city, and I thought of that Weakerthans song about buildings gone missing like teeth. And then I thought about Spooks because I am nothing if not obvious.

--

Camille Saroyan (Bones)

Rosalind Myers (Spooks)

River Song (Doctor Who)

Ava Crowder (Justified)

Astrid Farnsworth (Fringe)

Ahhhh, ladies. I like my ladies to be a little ballsy, sharp, and wicked smart.

Comments

[odainath.livejournal.com]

I think I can most definitely agree with you about your choice of female characters. :D

[belantana.livejournal.com]

A place
where everything too big to take apart
had been left behind.

Oh wow.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I love so much of that poem.

Few buildings, few lives
are built so well
even their ruins are beautiful.

[zeitheist.livejournal.com]

Ironically, on the train yesterday I thought of something else I could've asked you for the Five Things meme, and was all "... well, thanks, brain; why didn't you come up with that a week ago?!"

Still, this was a glorious post. I didn't realize you loved River Song! (I think that cap you've picked for her is my favourite River Song-related moment - the way she makes the Dalek beg for mercy is horrifying, but it's so fascinating). Also, I feel like I should catch up on Spooks.

I remain unapologetic for asking for your favourite poems, again, because it's always so fascinating to me, your reasons for why you like things. I think I liked the Marty McConnell one the most, and may go in search of more of her stuff. love, lay your burden down, here, tell me how / to make this body a safehouse and not / a prison.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

There's no moratorium; ask away!

re:River Song, lol, we've talked about her before. But, yes, I've loved her since the Library episodes. I think she is an excellent addition to the Doctor's story. The spam was supposed to have quotes and/or commentary, but work sort of overtook my time.

I've got a few of McConnell's poems bookmarked, but you should check out her performances at Hampshire Slam, and also Spine, which is a group performance with Rachel McKibbens (whom I also love). I will find links in a moment.

Marty McConnell performs "Anna Politkovskaya to Katie Couric" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCe3HMIn95s)

Rachel McKibbens and Marty McConnell perform their group piece at Bar 13 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ9zt5fUS00)

Saint Catherine of Siena to Mary-Kate Olsen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJcmf1qGt9U)

[zeitheist.livejournal.com]

There's no moratorium; ask away!

So, okay. I would like to know about five moments of fiction (any media) which really moved you. Not necessarily your favourite moments, just... stuff that elicited some strong emotion, be it something that moved you to tears, or a moment that made you so happy you felt like you could barely contain it.

It's kind of a dorky question, and also takes a gamble on people getting as into their fiction as I do. You may be looking at me weirdly right now! Feel free to ignore it.

I think a recurring theme of our conversations is apparently "zeitheist's memory is shit". So, yes. I love that picture you chose of River Song, though.

Thank you for the links, as well. I'm going to watch them now! ♥

[exceptindreams.livejournal.com]

Great choice of poems. Thank you.