Sometimes two objects seem to have only the slightest connection. The two poems below share the word "smoke." A tenuous link at best -- or is there something more going on?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil's poem "The Secret of Soil" begins with smoke, rather than soil:
The secret of smoke is that it will fill
any space with walls, no matter
how delicate: lung cell, soapy bubble
blown from a bright red ring.
So perhaps the author is going to drive the poem toward the theme announced in the title . . .
The secret of soil is that it is alive—
a step in the forest means
you are carried on the back
of a thousand bugs. The secret
I give you is on page forty-two
of my old encyclopedia set.
I cut out all the pictures of minerals
and gemstones . . .
Wait a minute -- she just veered away from the supposed central idea of the poem!
I cut out all the pictures of minerals
and gemstones. I could not take
their
beauty, could not swallow
that
such stones lived deep insidethe earth. I wanted to tape them
to my hands and wrists, I held
them
to my thin brown neck.
I
wanted my mouth to fillwith light, a rush of wind
and pepper . . .
Maybe the theme of the poem is that the speaker is trying to ingest the essence of the world around her, and that like smoke, this essence will fill all of her interior and exterior being. But the poem does not end there:
. . . I wanted my mouth to fill
with light, a rush of wind
and pepper. I can still taste it
like
a dare across a railroad track,
sure
with feet-solid step. I’m notallowed to be alone with scissors.
I will always find a way to dig.
Perhaps "dare" is the crucial word here. The speaker's overwhelming need to subsume the particulars of the world makes her (relative to other people) dangerous: she's the one you cannot trust with scissors, and she's the one who will keep on digging to find and experience the true taste of the world she inhabits.
* * * *
In Sally Ashton's prose-poem "I wait for a rogue wave," the word "smoke" doesn't appear until the final sentence within the second paragraph. How does the poem find its way there?
I wait for a rogue wave to hit or a seagull to shit in my hair, what it means to sit on a rock
near unprecedented sea, the sea that sounds like itself and nothing else in the world at the
edge of the world where the waves change themselves against cliff. Here comes another
woman down the same path, silent because of the self-sounding sea. Who isn’t obvious,
only where and when. She hops the stream that barely troubles the surf.
Besides the self-mocking humor about the seagull and the fresh notion of "unprecedented sea," we have a simple stage with two actors: first the speaker appears, then another woman enters. Nothing unusual has happened . . . until:
She hops the stream that barely troubles the surf. Next I look, she sits naked on the sand with
a flame between her legs.
Ashton mysteriously and delightfully subverts our expectations:
Next I look, she sits naked on the sand with a flame between her legs. This sounds like sex
but it’s pages she burns, not self or passion though that’s implied.
The tension builds as the speaker notices her own mini-conflict: should she continue watching or not?
I can’t bear to watch nor should I. Watch. One who waits for birdshit must not interfere with
one who self-emoliates [sic]. Instead I pocket two stones, one smooth, one jagged like an
arrowhead and climb back up the cliff careful at each pitched step.
We notice the first of two curious words in the prose-poem: "self-emoliates". Is it a typo or what? (The bracketed Latin word sic means "thus" and is the literary convention for an editor to say "I'm quoting the author as is. I'm just as puzzled and curious as you the reader might be.") Obviously, the other woman on the beach is not immolating herself: she's just burning some pieces of paper. Or has Ashton created a word to subsume the notions of immolate, mollify (to placate or calm) and emollient (a lotion which softens)?
Back to Ashton's prose-poem. Curiosity gets the better of our speaker in the second of the two paragraphs:
And I look back where one at a time each torn page torn out goes up in flame, each page a
prayer. I don’t pray, such unbinding the loosening of thought, an unbodiment [sic] of desire.
How is a mystery, and why can’t be spoken. Even what fools the eye. Only fuel, smoke rising
in a pillar, my lips flecked with salt.
And now the other curious word: "unbodiment," perhaps a way of capturing a notion opposite from "embodiment."
What strikes us about Ashton's speaker is her honesty. She confides that she cannot help gazing at the other woman and trying to make sense of the mysterious fire ritual. She interprets each burning page as "a prayer" and confesses that she herself doesn't (cannot?) pray. Her take on the seaside mini-drama? It's "fuel, smoke rising in a pillar."
So: are the two members of our poem-pair only weakly related via the single word "smoke?"
"Fuel" might just serve as the stronger-than-originally-thought connection. Nezhukumatathil's smoke signals the desire to absorb/devour the speaker's world. Ashton's smoke signals the fuel that drives our curiosity about potentially unknowbale facets of our world.
* * * *
The Secret of
Soil (Aimee Nezhukumatathil)
The
secret of smoke is that it will fill
any
space with walls, no matterhow delicate: lung cell, soapy bubble
blown from a bright red ring.
The
secret of soil is that it is alive—
a
step in the forest meansyou are carried on the back
of a thousand bugs. The secret
I give you is on page forty-two
of my old encyclopedia set.
I cut out all the pictures of minerals
and gemstones. I could not take
their beauty, could not swallow
that such stones lived deep inside
the earth. I wanted to tape them
to my hands and wrists, I held
them to my thin brown neck.
I wanted my mouth to fill
with light, a rush of wind
and pepper. I can still taste it
like a dare across a railroad track,
sure with feet-solid step. I’m not
allowed to be alone with scissors.
I will always find a way to dig.
(from Lucky
Fish, page 3: Tupelo Press, North Adams, MA © 2011)
* * * *
I wait for a
rogue wave (Sally Ashton)
I wait for a rogue wave to hit or a seagull to shit in my hair, what it means to sit
on a rock near unprecedented sea, the sea that sounds like itself and nothing else
in the world at the edge of the world where the waves change themselves against
cliff. Here comes another woman down the same path, silent because of the self-
sounding sea. Who isn’t obvious, only where and when. She hops the stream that
barely troubles the surf. Next I look, she sits naked on the sand with a flame
between her legs. This sounds like sex but it’s pages she burns, not self or passion
though that’s implied. I can’t bear to watch nor should I. Watch. One who waits
for birdshit must not interfere with one who self-emoliates [sic]. Instead I pocket two
stones, one smooth, one jagged like an arrowhead and climb back up the cliff
careful at each pitched step.
And I look back where one at a time each torn page torn out goes up in flame, each page
a prayer. I don’t pray, such unbinding the loosening of thought, an unbodiment [sic] of
desire. How is a mystery, and why can’t be spoken. Even what fools the eye. Only
fuel, smoke rising in a pillar, my lips flecked with salt.
