Word Choice features original works of fiction and poetry. Read two poems by Jared Stanley with art by Simon Nunn, selected by Daniel Moysaenko.

 

Simon Nunn. Flatbed #3. Photography, 210×297 mm, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

 

 

 

                           October

                           When I prop the left

                           side of my head on my

                           left hand, my heart starts

                           beating in my right ear;

                           the hairs on that ear catch

                           the last of this year’s sun

                           heat, which is making spectral

                           filigrees in the hairs which

                           cover that lobe in

                           tiny prisms (these days

                           of emphatic color)

                           prismatic like the leg

                           hairs of pre-pubescent

                           boys and girls—I

                           was one of those

                           once, staring at

                           my shins; the hairs

                           exactly the same as

                           the hairs on Katrina’s,

                           who was on the floor

                           with her legs straight out

                           her back propped up

                           on a plush mauve ottoman

                           at the after school bible study

                           group somebody or other

                           convinced me to go to.

                           Katrina was Christian.

                           Staring at her legs

                           and at mine was

                           how I endured it

                           an embedded-

                           in-my-person person

                           an animist even, and

                           interested in whether

                           she was embedded in hers

                           and whether hairs in general

                           were, as Danny in

                           Withnail & I said,

                           your aerials.

                           The children of

                           the family who

                           hosted the bible

                           study were spoiled.

                           Animism explains

                           why I stole action

                           figures from the back

                           of their untidy closet,

                           an act of malice,

                           of ensoulment

                           against the chintzy

                           iconoclasm in

                           the living room

                           a presentation or

                           warning to my

                           forebears’ prohibitions

                           against dancing, their

                           love of yelling —

                           anyway what

                           is more animist

                           than a Transformer?

                           October is

                           a turn in the poem

                           neither the end

                           of a romance

                           nor the start

                           of a tragedy

                           one more golden

                           age out in the

                           future beyond the

                           thin-skinned touch

                           of public discourse

                           upon my soft tissue

                           which needs a whole

                           tube of ointment

                           squirted upon it.

                           No.

                           October is full

                           of Libras, born under

                           the gentlest sign

                           time of harvest

                           of steadily cooling

                           abundance, in which

                           we say goodbye

                           to the absurd

                           threats that wizards

                           of finance make:

                           they think they

                           extinguish us

                           with surveys

                           we who, in the guise

                           of the teacher and the

                           saunterer, predate

                           them, and prey

                           upon their fear

                           which spreads

                           like a cliché

                           for we are

                           in point of fact

                           their elders

                           in our avocation

                           or enthusiasm

                           and we drink their

                           spitting ignorance

                           for sustenance

                           or aver or talk over

                           or mock them in

                           our native tongue,

                           wherever in

                           the amnesia that

                           came from

                           to live in and on,

                           like worms or the

                           hairs of Katrina,

                           or a boat,

                           or a lake,

                           itself anew

                           as Art, my friend,

                           my friend—

                           in the golden age

                           my heart it beats

                           with both my ears

                           it’s nothing

                           to remember

                           there’s nothing

                           so forget it’s

                           combed finely along

                           these comely ears, such

                           a pause in them, such

                           a pink, lop-eared

                           yeti or chimera

                           in the golden age

                           or its purple years

                           or its white fur

                           and my heart

                           skips to beat

                           it out in all

                           such ears

 

 

 

 

Slept On It Wrong,

so I can’t keep my mind cold

         enough to hover from mountain

            to mountain to mountain

on a lightness of color,

                 in my empyrean

 hair glitter – I wanted to

                 mean anything,

         anything frail, even—

                              I could be

could not be without my body

         in that pain, its

dimensions numerous as muscles:

                           a thought. And, if

I had a thought

            there’d be stars (under my eyelids)

          if I tried to move my arm

                           for consolation

                 in motion

             I could think it,

  and still only see stars

         when I moved my arm

         there was a pop, up in my sleep

                  at the top

                            of my spine, center

   of my mind: I mean, I was screaming!

                   I have loved this body too much

          in its humorous juxtapositions, to be

screaming at it,

                       like a thing

            I was born to be all up in.

 

                 ∗

 

So, the world’s in

the way it makes you squint.

Wince rhymes with quince.

I saw one once, in Oxfordshire…

brought to mind in

the richness which returns to life

after bodily pain has stopped.

If poetry were the way to do it,

I’d wish such abundance on our

friends whose pains do not subside.

I marvel, how they still hover in their bodies

from mountain to mountain to mountain

can still consider the fundament,

how one takes the air, how one

enjoys the chicken and waffles,

can still take such delicate care

with their heads inclining flowerward

in the forthrightness of bodily pain,

typing and shaping and figuring out problems.

Seamless in touch, in conversation

rarely crying out. They are strong people.

—For MH, SC, FP

 

 

Jared Stanley is the author of The Weeds, Book Made of Forest, and four chapbooks, including How the Desert Did Me In. He is a 2012-2014 Research Fellow at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.

 

Simon Nunn (born 1991) lives and works from Bury St. Edmunds, UK.