high eminence of deconstruction
Paul de Man
declared the text subversive--
meaning debunked--
the author dead
writing in Belgium, 1941,
for Nazi Le Soir,
called Germany the future
of Europe
said Jews might be shipped off
without undue loss
at Yale, negated history:
the aporias of Auschwitz
transformed by hermeneutics
into jouissance
all accusations fade
to écriture
millions of corpses
lost in the text
“as if a magic lantern threw the nerves
in patterns on a screen”
a monitor
articulated blueprint
of bone, muscle
neural interlace
circulatory system (red and blue)
your body
puts you in the movie
God says,
I’m gonna make you a star
you lift these limbs
trudge through landscapes
clothed in the language of the clan
trading dead rabbits for grain
herring for coin
searching those points
where feelings jerk back against the strings
where that which is not puppet
hides its heart
How long can I keep them in my head
those little voices
suppressed by Ego’s law
chattering monkeys
brain full of maggots
when will they stream out
as children burst from school
at three o’clock
as nebulae erupt
in flowers of light?
for my daughter,1997
because you’re
so tormented
and I’m so
fucking helpless
and like the ’92 Accord
I bought you
unmangled
in the body shops
of San Jose
both
stamped
by the past
your body beneath a dress
your body bare
trying to discover the art
of touching you
of cradling your nakedness in mine
of matching smithereens
of the first marriage
last night
I could feel
how I felt to you
we were one
in the sense of “cleave to”
our fingers
embedded in flesh
today
time cleaves
our entangled atoms
I don’t remember
how I felt to myself
as distance numbs
cooling skin
and I see you
as someone
else
the watermark of love
her thigh
across my groin
a sentry
of her sleeping mind
stakes out my presence
in the breathing dark
charged intimacy of paired particles
binding of quarks
the strong force
you who are so no good for me
but in a flood of pleasure
give yourself to me
beyond all measure
whose skin spreads heat
under my palms
whose stirrups are my feet
from that which drags us down
that pure perception
awaking, we can never keep
up love’s deception
shatters the calm surface of his hours
goading the pulse to blind acceleration
betrayal, guilt
incite disintegration
envelops, everts
devours
Our love
a theory held so deeply
damned by experiment
tries darker formulae
rarer elements;
dreams of
a flat-earth world
where Troy still stands
Lamarck’s confirmed
aether, mermaids
cold fusion
prove
to the thousandth place
as theory bends with flesh.
Till then
tested to destruction
locked in the starry tangles of our minds
our love defines its own dimensions
and believes
its own soliloquies.
last year
she put the old retriever to sleep
placed her father in a home
gave away the furniture
closets of clothes
and left the house
where she’d brought up her children
the boy who’s living
the girl who died
last night,
in dreams, she let the dog
whining because it hadn’t peed in months
out of the house
I hope she lets her daughter out
and then herself
closing the door behind
for years I tried
to realign the stars
tear you from a dark populace
of ragged shadows
sad hovering spectre
you smile distantly
when our paths cross
absent—still here
I don my ghost shirt
heliotrope with navy stripes
a cloak of film and newsprint
floating behind
from which quadrant
is the wind?
how high the surge?
how many knots and isobars?
lately we sleep
in separate beds
boats thrash in their slips
snapping lines
a gull spins
backwards
in a gale of fragments
she leaves
a letter listing
unforgivable things
I dream of our
wild acts of love
as walls roar
and we move
into the eye
half expecting
to find her unpacked
but the hangers all were bare
the photos, gone.
We’d rehearsed this
a dozen times—
with all the sorrow and the explanations
concern of friends
probing of motivations
until we got it right
no melodrama, no mistaken cues.
I remembered the penultimate
when we’d made love
I was too ardent, hurt her
there was blood
the next time I was gentle
she moaned into my shoulder
some slight redemption
in a world
where every single time could be the last.
suspicion
accusation
flashes in distant cloud
desire
recurrent in the mind
under Fall debris
postcards, snapshots
letters returned
unopened
I wanted to write about your body
as you stood before me
naked in candlelight and summerdark
my hands at your waist
the warmth of your skin
curving from hip to breast
your shoulders brushed by gold
the sorrow in your eyes
that always returns
and sunrise doesn’t wait
on ecstasy
I tore your picture from its frame
hid your nakedness
in the pages of a book
fragrant as morning
luminous as night
© Copyright 2-2-97 Martin A. Abramson. All rights reserved.