Space Struck Read online

  SPACE

  STRUCK

  SPACE STRUCK

  PAIGE LEWIS

  Copyright © 2019 by Paige Lewis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lewis, Paige, 1991– author.

  Title: Space struck : poems / Paige Lewis.

  Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019006381 (print) | LCCN 2019009647 (e-book) ISBN 9781946448453 (e-book) | ISBN 9781946448446 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

  Classification: LCC PS3612.E973 (e-book) | LCC PS3612.E973 A6 2019 (print) DDC 811/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006381

  Cover image © Joachim Bandau

  Untitled, 2006

  watercolour on paper

  30 x 22.5 inches

  Courtesy of the artist and Nicholas Metivier Gallery

  Cover and interior design by Alban Fischer.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  for Kaveh

  So while they journeyed up that sloping road,

  the Sibyl told her story to Aeneas;

  they exited the underworld at Cumae,

  and there Aeneas offered customary

  sacrifices, then landed on the shore

  that, as yet, did not bear his nurse’s name.

  —OVID, Metamorphoses, Book XIV

  I hear eternity

  Is self-forgetting.

  —LYNN XU, “Earth Light: I”

  CONTENTS

  I.

  Normal Everyday Creatures

  On the Train, a Man Snatches My Book

  No One Cares Until You’re the Last of Something

  Saccadic Masking

  The Foxes Are Back

  Because the Color Is Half the Taste

  The Moment I Saw a Pelican Devour

  When I Tell My Beloved I Miss the Sun,

  When They Find the Ark

  I Love Those Who Can Walk Slow Over Glass and Still Keep

  My Dear Wolfish Dreamboat, Stand Still

  II.

  The Terre Haute Planetarium Rejected My Proposal

  On Distance

  God Stops By

  Where I’m From, Every House Is a House with an Obstructed View

  You Be You, and I’ll Be Busy

  St. Francis Disrobes

  In the Hands of Borrowers, Objects Are Twice as Likely to Break

  Turn Me Over, I’m Done on This Side

  Golden Record

  Chapel of the Green Lord

  Diorama of Ghosts

  Space Struck

  III.

  You Can Take Off Your Sweater, I’ve Made Today Warm

  I’ve Been Trying to Feel Bad for Everyone

  The River Reflects Nothing

  Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself

  God’s Secretary, Overworked

  Pavlov Was the Son of a Priest

  Diorama of Our Need to Escape the Cold We Make

  Magic Show

  So You Want to Leave Purgatory

  Royal I

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  I

  NORMAL EVERYDAY

  CREATURES

  I’m going to show you some photos—

  extreme close-ups of normal, everyday

  creatures. A patch of gray fur, half

  a yellow eye. When you guess each creature

  right, you guess each creature into being.

  Soon you’ll have enough to open a zoo,

  and people will visit because it’s not every day

  they get to see everyday creatures in cages.

  Oh, of course your zoo will have cages!

  Otherwise you’ve just got world around you

  and who’s going to pay for that? Your father?

  Actually, let’s not talk about fathers,

  they are boring and offer clumsy advice

  on toothpick drawbridges, on soothing

  saw grass wounds, on wearing the same pair

  of underwear four days straight like the Boy Scouts.

  I was never a Boy Scout, though I did dream

  of pinewood derbies and being afraid

  of the forest. I might ask you one day to go

  camping, and if you have the desire to dance.

  Please, when we finish spinning, aim me toward

  the river. Once, while jumping from stone

  to stone, I slipped into the river and scared

  a snake from his underwater hiding place,

  and though he did not wisp his tongue at me,

  though he made no rude remarks about

  my bony feet or the house I was raised in, I

  wanted to harm him. I was frightened—

  I thought I knew where everything belonged.

  I do know the snake does not belong in these

  photos. It is not an everyday creature. I can tell

  you this because this is my game—I’m allowed

  to give hints. And if, for some reason, you don’t

  belong in this space with me, getting fingerprints

  all over my glossy animals, then we’ll journey

  until we find the world in which we both fit.

  And when the path grows too dark to see even

  the bright parts of me, have faith in the sound

  of my voice. I’m here. I’m still the one leading.

  ON THE TRAIN, A MAN

  SNATCHES MY BOOK

  On the train, a man snatches my book,

  reads the last line, and says, I completely get you,

  you’re not that complex. He could be right—lately

  all my what ifs are about breath: What if

  a glassblower inhales at the wrong

  moment? What if I’m drifting on a sailboat

  and the wind stops? If he’d ask me how I’m

  feeling, I’d give him the long version—I feel

  as if I’m on the moon listening to the air hiss

  out of my spacesuit, and I can’t find the hole. I’m

  the vice president of panic, and the president is

  missing. Most nights, I calm myself by listing

  animals still on the Least Concern end of the

  extinction spectrum: aardvarks and blackbirds

  are fine. Minnows thrive—though this brings

  me no relief—they can swim through sludge

  if they have to. I don’t think I’ve ever written

  the word doom, but nothing else fits.

  Every experience seems both urgent and

  unnatural—like right now, this train

  is approaching the station where my beloved

  is waiting to take me to the orchard, so we can

  pay for the memory of having once, at dusk,

  plucked real apples from real trees.

  NO ONE CARES UNTIL YOU’RE

  THE LAST OF SOMETHING

  Someone squealed about the ivory-billed woodpecker

  nesting on my back porch, and now there’s a line

  of binoculared men holding buckets of mealworms

  and pushing their way into my home. I let them in

  because I’d rather be host than hostage and really,

  how could these lovers of
redheaded grub-slurpers

  be bad? They sport such splendid hiking shorts.

  They press their noses against my sliding glass door

  and ask for the woodpecker’s name. I didn’t give him

  one—worried that if I named him, he’d never leave,

  and honestly, I haven’t been a fan since I watched

  him raid a blue jay’s nest for breakfast. Well, I didn’t fully

  watch—most of what I see, I see through the gaps

  in my fingers. This sort of looking has turned me

  boring—even the sun’s been sighing, Not you again,

  when it sees me. And I’m sure there’s an alternate

  universe where my gaze is unwavering, where I’m paid

  to name the newest nail polish colors—Fiddlehead

  Green, Feral Red, Geothermal Glitter—where

  I don’t hate documentarians for letting nature be

  its gruesome self. But I’m stuck in this one, listening

  to the demands of birdwatchers—they want postcards

  and T-shirts, they want me to build an avian-themed

  carousel in the middle of my living room. I want them

  to leave. At midnight, I turn off the porch light,

  and they swear they can still see inside his nest.

  Someone asks, Doesn’t he look happy? Yes, they

  all agree. Don’t you think he sounds like Fred Astaire

  with his tap-tap-tapping? Of course! Dresses like him, too.

  I don’t know if it’s the hunger, the heat, or the hours

  of not blinking that turns them cultish, but I go with it.

  I ask, Shouldn’t he have a break from your surveillance?

  They nod. Yes, a break! I’m giddy at the thought

  of being alone. I say, It’s time to go home and rest.

  They remove their shoes and lie down on countertops,

  in closets, and underneath my staircase. Wherever

  there’s space, they fill it—body against tired body—

  pressed close as feathers.

  SACCADIC

  MASKING

  —a phenomenon where the brain blocks out blurred images created by movement of the eye

  All constellations are organisms

  and all organisms are divine

  and unfixed. I am spending

  my night in the kitchen. There

  is blood in the batter—dark

  strands stretch like vocal

  cords telling me I am missing

  so much with these blurred

  visions: a syringe flick, the tremor

  of my wrist—raised veins silked

  green. I have seen the wings

  of a purple finch wavering

  around its body, stuck, burned

  to the grill of my car, which means

  I have failed to notice its flight—

  a lesson on infinities, a lesson I

  am trying to learn. I am trying.

  Tell me, how do I steady my gaze

  when everything I want is motion?

  THE FOXES

  ARE BACK

  So this is water without your mouth-oil

  ghosting the surface. How much must I

  swallow before I can say that the foxes

  are back, possessing our forest, asking,

  Where are your fruits? And since you

  brought me the word paradise, I assume

  they mean you. What else can I offer?

  That thing about boiling frogs isn’t true—

  they know what rising heat means

  and they will jump out. All my pots

  are empty. Can you see the shroud

  of hunger, the crease between my

  chest that says, Fold here, Cut here?

  Can’t you see these pointed ribs want

  to tangle—and what of my fruits?

  The foxes are lining my windows,

  shielding their eyes from the lamplight

  with tiny-pawed soldier salutes. They scrape their

  teeth against the glass—it almost

  sounds like chirping. It almost sounds

  like you, skipping stones

  across our still-frozen pond.

  BECAUSE THE COLOR

  IS HALF THE TASTE

  it’s a shame to eat blackberries in the dark,

  but that’s exactly what I’m up to when a man

  startles down the street screaming, The fourth

  dimension is not time! He makes me feel stupid

  and it’s hard to sleep knowing so little

  about everything, so I enroll in a night class

  where I learn the universe is an arrow

  without end and it asks only one question:

  How dare you? I recite it in bed, How dare

  you? How dare you? But still I can’t find sleep.

  So I go out where winter is and roll

  around in the snow until a sharp rock

  meets the vulnerable plush of my belly.

  A little blood. Hunched over, I must look

  like I’m hiding something I don’t want to share.

  And I suppose that’s true—the sharp,

  the warm wet. The color is half the pain. Why

  would anyone else want to see? How dare they?

  THE MOMENT I SAW

  A PELICAN DEVOUR

  a seagull—wings swallowing wings—I learned

  that a miracle is anything that God forgot

  to forbid. So when you tell me that saints

  are splintered into bone bits smaller than

  the freckles on your wrist and that each speck

  is sold to the rich, I know to marvel at this

  and not the fact that these same saints are still

  wholly intact and fresh-faced in their Plexiglas

  tomb displays. We holy our own fragments

  when we can—trepanation patients wear their

  skull spirals as amulets, mothers frame the dried

  foreskin of their firstborn, and I’ve seen you

  swirl my name on your tongue like a thirst pebble.

  Still, I try to hold on to nothing for fear of being

  crushed by what can be taken because sometimes

  not even our mouths belong to us. Listen, in

  the early 1920s, women were paid to paint radium

  onto watch dials so that men wouldn’t have to ask

  the time in dark alleys. They were told it was safe,

  told to lick their brushes into sharp points. These

  women painted their nails, their faces, and judged

  whose skin shone brightest. They coated their

  teeth so their boyfriends could see their bites

  with the lights turned down. The miracle here