Jorie Graham

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
...

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
...

In this blue light
I can take you there,
snow having made me
a world of bone
...

Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
...

Up ahead, I know, he felt it stirring in himself already, the glance,
the darting thing in the pile of rocks,

already in him, there, shiny in the rubble, hissing Did you want to remain
...

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
...

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
...

Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
...

                                   
        Spring
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.
...

It has a hole in it. Not only where I

concentrate.
...

All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
...

The man held his hands to his heart as
he danced.
He slacked and swirled.
The doorways of the little city
...

In the fairy tale the sky
makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
to put it
...

Dying, Dad wanted sunscreen. Nonstop. Frantic if withheld. Would say
screen, and we just did it. Knew he was dying. Was angry.
In last weeks wore red sleepmask over eyes day and night. Would
ride it up onto his forehead for brief intervals, then down, pulled by
hand that still worked. A bit. Sometimes shaking too much so just
cried eyes. Cried now now. Once cried out light — more like a hiss — was
there for that. Yanked it quick. Needed it so badly, the bandage, the

world is a short place, wanted the illustration of it gone, wanted to not
see out, wanted no out. But I am guessing. The vineyards down the slope,
each latent bud beginning to plump. In the distance, mountains. Beyond
sea. All of it distraction, but from what. A waste of what. The red
sleepmask. I should have burned it with the rest but kept it. The pane
made trees look painted on. Silky. Not good silky. In the next valley once,
hammering. Thought it human at first. The woodpeckers went on for

days. A carnival of searching for void. How full void is. Small tufts of
grass growing so that I can keep track. Taking root is not an easy way to
go about finding a place to stay. Maybe nothing would happen after
all. The hollowing-out now added to by crickets. Spiders making
roads in sky. I watch. Look at, then through. What is the empty
part? Where. Can find nothing that is empty. Seems I should, and soon, as
where would he go, or what would the indented place on the bed where

he had been be. Be full of. He was a settler in that flesh, that I could see.
Not far from breaking camp. Wrapping up the organs in their separate
parts — skin rolled away, eyes rolled elsewhere, the fingers tossed
aside — ash, ash — the whole like a dime toss, whom do I love, what part,
what's in the whom, what's in the late, is there actually a too late — 
because if there is I do not grasp it. Mask he calls, unable to get into
wheelchair any longer, stares for bit of time into the air out front, past

feet, out the glass door, to the olive tree and fig. Is there fire in the
distance. Squints once back up the ray of light, up, back its long road.
How far. Mask now. The cremation-decision driving its roots through us
all — roots spreading wildly beyond the shadows of the head. "Neighbors"
will continue to feed stump, book says, long after it is cut, will send it
sugars, phosphorous, nitrogen, all the surrounding trees will try, via
fungi, root hairs, send carbon, send enzymes, whole forest hears

stress signals, will mourn, like the elephant — "I've wrapped stumps in
black plastic when they've refused to die" says Leila, location Wellington,
posted 4 years ago on permagardening. But then guard down. Eyes gone.
A red cotton mask. An old TWA one. Elastic gone. Cries out if it slips off.
Wants blue blanket. Says blue. Angry. Who was not angry. Nothing
enough. Wants to see all daily tests. Read the bloodwork. Wants trans-
fusions which we withhold. Would open him to infection. Would buy no

time. I'm wearing the sleepmask now. I'm trying it on. Rubberband soft
with age. Adding more age. American red. Red full of noise, of artificial
time. Feels like my face is painted on. A spirit. Upturned, ancient, without
expression. An old stream flows alongside. Glimmering tongues promise
the vanishing will be swift. It's a lie. The periphery disappears but I can
still feel it, our knowing what's coming a thicket we got lost in — till the
only thing is now — mask my spirit screams — mask now — vacancy

not coming fast enough — before we have to traverse the riddling
disappearances — extinction says the mask — go away now I do not want
to see you any longer — beauty you are too near — too near — I hear a
blackbird and the shoo of air where it lifts off — why won't you just
go, you circling winds leaves birds systems directions visibles invisibles
honeysuckle limbs and rose gaining self-song, motion, entering this
continuum — oh continuum do not lie to me with this delicate weight of

time, this floating of as ifs and further-ons and all your guides to
dreaming, abundance, the coming true of the true. No. From under here,
listening hard, light feels around me almost visible, doused with
benzene, and time goes away, and my eyes feel on them the small weight,
the minuscule no to things, which I can conjure, which I think I know by
heart, but no, I do not, I need the mask. And it feels like an
idea. We are in a cave now. It is a hundred million years ago. They will

bring the meds again now and the urine pot — he yells for it — but for now
under the mask it is a lowly spot, you can make dawn come
you can feel us inherit the earth, the jay shifts in the tree and you can
hear it. There is little. You hear the little. Hear the head snapped on the
stem. Hear the angel trapped in the stone. Hear pure chance which
sounds like a boy marching alongside an army wanting to enlist. The
year is 1490, 380, 1774, 10 BCE. You hear the outline in the tree — why — 

because it touches the other outlines. If I try to raise the mask the hand
he can barely use flutters angry bird wing at me. Would hit me with
finger wings but too broken. Maybe in Lee's army, maybe in Grant's. It
made no difference in the end. Maybe in Caesar's maybe in Christ's. The
trillions seem more clear than ever in the day behind the mask. The dark
gray of the fever feels every inch of the bark. Freckled, the pure
proclamations being made by the light. It is not day it is saying, bright as

quicklime, text of flames he can hear — no, not day — day sprawls under
to let us flow through over its parched back. Lies flat. Lie flat day he
thinks under the red mask. Spread yourself over us light, the dead at
Antietam yes his people, both sides, the cufflinks in the drawer he will
not see again — they were Lee's he would say — they were Grant's — I saw
the will of the Davis side — I did — he says, smell of gravel coming from
the path, day sitting now over us like a lioness. It is neither dark nor

light. As if you are the place where the branch was sawed off — that place
on the oak — and air silently touched your new raw end. You put it on,
you pull it down, and then effort, enlistment, singing, and you are given a
fine practitioner's absence, you are a purpose surrounded by chance, a
hole in chance. You can feel the clouds move over the sun from here. You
can hear the sun return and insect-hum spray up. You can lie still and feel
this is the ultimate price. You feel it getting paid. By you. It is you.
...

Dying only mother's hands continue
undying, blading into air,
impersonal, forced, curving it
down — drought incessant rain
revolution and the organs shutting
down but not these extremities,
here since I first opened my first
eyes first day and there they were,
delicate, pointing, will not back off,
cannot be remembered. Mother,
dying — mother not wanting to
die — mother scared awakening
each night thinking she's dead —
crying out — mother not
remembering who I am as I run
in — who am I — mother we must
take away the phone because who
will you call next — now saying I
dreamt I have to get this dress on, if
I get this dress on I will not die —
mother who cannot get the dress on
because of broken hip and broken
arm and tubes and coils and pan
and everywhere pain, wandering
delirium, in the fetid shadow-
world — geotrauma — trans-
natural — what is this message
you have been scribbling all your
life to me, what is this you drag
again today into non-being. Draw it.
The me who is not here. Who is the
ghost in this room. What am I that
is now drawn. Where are we
heading. Into what do you throw
me with your quick eye — up onto
me then down onto the blank of the
page. You rip the face
off. I see my elbow there where
now you bend it with the pen, you
fill it in, you slough it off me onto
more just-now making of more
future. You look back up, you take
my strangeness from me, you
machine me, you hatch me in. To
make what, mother, here in this
eternity this second this million
years where I watch as each thing is
seen and cancelled-out and re-
produced — multiplying aspects of
light in the morning air — the
fingers dipping frantic into the bag
of pens, pencils, then here they
are — the images — and the hands
move — they are making a
line now, it is our world,
it horizons, we ghost, we sleepwalk,
everything around us is leveled,
canceled, we background, we
are barely remains, we remain, but
for what, the fingers are deepening
curling, bringing it round, the mind
does not — I don't think — know this
but the fingers, oh, for all my life
scribbling open the unseen,
done with mere things, not
interested in appraisal, just
seizure — what is meant by
seizure — all energy, business-
serious, about direction, tracing
things that dissolve from thingness
into in-betweens — here firm lines,
here powdery lift off — hunger,
fear — the study begins — all is not
lost — the thought a few seconds
wide — the perusal having gone
from here to here, aggregates,
thicket, this spot could be where
we came in, or where we are saved,
could be a mistake, looks across
room through me, me not here
then, me trying to rise in the beam,
nothing I do will make it
happen, rock-face, work that
excludes everything that is not
itself, all urge in the process of
becoming all effect, how can I touch
that hand like snow moving, when
is it time again as here there is no
time, or time has been loaded but
not cocked, so is held in reserve, all
wound up, I was also made but not
like this, I look for reluctance,
expectation, but those are not the
temperatures — if only I could be in
the scene — my time is not
passing — whose is the time that is
passing — the hands rushing across
the paper, cloudy with a sun
outside also rushing scribbling —
wisdom turning itself away from
wisdom to be — what — a thing that
would gold-up but cannot, a patch
of blue outside suddenly like the
cessation of language when lips
cease to move — sun — self-
pronouncing — I want this to not be
my writing of it, want my hands not
to be here also, mingling with hers
who will not take my hand ever into
hers, no matter how late we are, no
matter that we have to run so fast
through all these people and I need
the hand, somewhere a radiant
clearing, are we heading for it, head
down towards the wide page, hand
full of high feeling, cannot tell if it
takes or gives, cannot tell what it is
that is generating the line, it comes
from the long fingers but is not
them, all is being spent, the feeling
that all — all that we need or have —
would be spent for this next thing
this capture, actually loud though
all you can hear is the small
scratching, and I feel dusk
approaching though it is still early
afternoon, just slipping,
no one here to see this but me, told
loud in silence by arcs, contours,
swell of wind, billowing, fluent —
ink chalk charcoal — sweeps, spirals,
the river that goes
nowhere, that has survived the
astonishments and will never
venture close to that heat again, is
cool here, looking up at what,
looking back down, how is it
possible the world still exists, as it
begins to take form there, in the not
being, there is once then there is the
big vocabulary, loosed, like
a jay's song thrown down when the
bird goes away, cold mornings,
hauling dawn away with it, leaving
grackle and crow in sun — they have
known what to find in the unmade
undrawn unseen unmarked and
dragged it into here — that it be
visible.
...

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms
hold still for just a moment longer.
Nothing looks satisfied,
but there is no real reason to move on much further:
this isn't a bad place;
why not pretend

we wished for it?
The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.
The hydrangea is resigned
to its pale and inconclusive utterances.
Towards the end of the season
it is not bad

to have the body. To have experienced joy
as the mere lifting of hunger
is not to have known it
less. The tobacco leaves
don't mind being removed
to the long racks—all uses are astounding

to the used.
There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven—
noon, for instance, or all the single victories
of gravity, or the kudzu vine,
most delicate of manias,
which has pressed its luck

this far this season.
It shines a gloating green.
Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.
Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives
being snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies
marking a stillness we can't keep.
...

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change—
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.
...

[Grand Forks, North Dakota]

A boy just like you took me out to see them,
the five hundred B-52's on alert on the runway,
fully loaded fully manned pointed in all the directions,
running every minute
of every day.
They sound like a sickness of the inner ear,

where the heard foams up into the noise of listening,
where the listening arrives without being extinguished.
The huge hum soaks up into the dusk.
The minutes spring open. Six is too many.
From where we watch,
from where even watching is an anachronism,

from the 23rd of March from an open meadow,
the concertina wire in its double helix
designed to tighten round a body if it turns
is the last path the sun can find to take out,
each barb flaring gold like a braille being read,
then off with its knowledge and the sun
is gone....

That's when the lights on all the extremities, like an outline, like a dress,
become loud in the story,
and a dark I have not seen before
sinks in to hold them one
by one.
Strange plot made to hold so many inexhaustible
screams.
Have you ever heard in a crowd mutterings of
blame

that will not modulate that will not rise?
He tells me, your stand-in, they stair-step up.
He touches me to have me look more deeply
in
to where for just a moment longer
color still lives:
the belly white so that it looks like sky, the top
some kind of brown, some soil—How does it look

from up there now
this meadow we lie on our bellies in, this field Iconography
tells me stands for sadness
because the wind can move through it uninterrupted?
What is it the wind
would have wanted to find and didn't

leafing down through this endless admiration unbroken
because we're too low for it
to find us?
Are you still there for me now in that dark
we stood in for hours
letting it sweep as far as it could down over us
unwilling to move, irreconcilable? What he
wants to tell me,

his whisper more like a scream
over this eternity of engines never not running,
is everything: how the crews assigned to each plane
for a week at a time, the seven boys, must live
inseparable,
how they stay together for life,
how the wings are given a life of
seven feet of play,

how they drop practice bombs called shapes over Nevada,
how the measures for counterattack in air
have changed and we
now forego firepower for jamming, for the throwing
of false signals. The meadow, the meadow hums, love, with the planes,
as if every last blade of grass were wholly possessed

by this practice, wholly prepared. The last time I saw you,
we stood facing each other as dusk came on.
I leaned against the refrigerator, you leaned against the door.
The picture window behind you was slowly extinguished,
the tree went out, the two birdfeeders, the metal braces on them.
The light itself took a long time,

bits in puddles stuck like the useless
splinters of memory, the chips
of history, hopes, laws handed down. Here, hold these he says, these
grasses these
torn pods, he says, smiling over the noise another noise, take these
he says, my hands wrong for

the purpose, here,
not-visible-from-the-sky, prepare yourself with these, boy and
bouquet of
thistleweed and wort and william and
timothy. We stood there. Your face went out a long time
before the rest of it. Can't see you anymore I said. Nor I,
you, whatever you still were
replied.
When I asked you to hold me you refused.
When I asked you to cross the six feet of room to hold me

you refused. Until I
couldn't rise out of the patience either any longer
to make us
take possession.
Until we were what we must have wanted to be:
shapes the shapelessness was taking back.
Why should I lean out?
Why should I move?
When the Maenads tear Orpheus limb from limb,
they throw his head

out into the river.
Unbodied it sings
all the way downstream, all the way to the single ocean,
head floating in current downriver singing,
until the sound of the cataracts grows,
until the sound of the open ocean grows and the voice.
...

In this blue light
I can take you there,
snow having made me
a world of bone
seen through to. This
is my house,

my section of Etruscan
wall, my neighbor's
lemontrees, and, just below
the lower church,
the airplane factory.
A rooster

crows all day from mist
outside the walls.
There's milk on the air,
ice on the oily
lemonskins. How clean
the mind is,

holy grave. It is this girl
by Piero
della Francesca, unbuttoning
her blue dress,
her mantle of weather,
to go into

labor. Come, we can go in.
It is before
the birth of god. No one
has risen yet
to the museums, to the assembly
line—bodies

and wings—to the open air
market. This is
what the living do: go in.
It's a long way.
And the dress keeps opening
from eternity

to privacy, quickening.
Inside, at the heart,
is tragedy, the present moment
forever stillborn,
but going in, each breath
is a button

coming undone, something terribly
nimble-fingered
finding all of the stops.
...

needed explanation

because of the mystic nature of the theory

and our reliance on collective belief

I could not visualize the end

the tools that paved the way broke

the body the foundation the exact copy of the real

our surfaces were covered

our surfaces are all covered

actual hands appear but then there is writing

in the cave we were deeply impressed

as in addicted to results

oh and dedication training the idea of loss of life

in our work we call this emotion

how a poem enters into the world

there is nothing wrong with the instrument

as here I would raise my voice but

the human being and the world cannot be equated

aside from the question of whether or not we are alone

and other approaches to nothingness

(the term "subject")(the term "only")

also opinion and annihilation

(the body's minutest sensation of time)

(the world, it is true, has not yet been destroyed)

intensification void

we are amazed

uselessness is the last form love takes

so liquid till the forgone conclusion

here we are, the forgone conclusion

so many messages transmitted they will never acquire meaning

do you remember my love my archive

touch me (here)

give birth to a single idea

touch where it does not lead to war

show me exact spot

climb the stairs

lie on the bed

have faith

nerves wearing only moonlight lie down

lie still patrol yr cage

be a phenomenon

at the bottom below the word

intention, lick past it

rip years

find the burning matter

love allows it (I think)

push past the freedom (smoke)

push past intelligence (smoke)

whelm sprawl

(favorite city) (god's tiny voices)

hand over mouth

let light arrive

let the past strike us and go

drift undo

if it please the dawn

lean down

say hurt undo

in your mouth be pleased

where does it say

where does it say

this is the mother tongue

there is in my mouth a ladder

climb down

presence of world

impassable gap

pass

I am beside myself

you are inside me as history

We exist Meet me
...