Rave: Poems, 1975-1998

by Olga Broumas

Overview

The Choir

I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead
look through my own, inaudible
hosannas greet
the panorama charged serene
and almost ultraviolet with so much witness.
Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane
divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun.
Holy the dark, pierced by late revelers and dawnbirds,
the garbage truck suspended in shy light,
the oystershell and crushed clam of the driveway,
the dahlia pressed like lotus on its open palm.
Holy the handmade and created side by side,
the sapphire of their marriage,
green flies and shit in condums in the crabshell
rinsed by the buzzing tide.
Holy the light—
the poison ivy livid in its glare,
the gypsy moths festooning the pine barrens,
the mating monarch butterflies between the chic boutiques.
The mermaids handprint on the artificial reef. Holy the we,
cast in the mermaid's image, smooth crotch of mystery and scale,
inscrutable until divulged by god
and sex into its gender, every touch
a secret intercourse with angels as we walk
proffered and taken. Their great wings
batter the air, our retinas bloom silver spots like beacons.
Better than silicone or graphite flesh absorbs
the shock of the divine crash-landing.
I roll my eyes back, skylights brushed by plumage of detail,
the unrehearsed and minuscule, the anecdotal midnight
themes of the carbon sea where we are joined:
zinnia, tomato, garlic wreaths
crowning the compost heap.

Elegy

Somebody left the world last night, I felt it
so, last minute, last half-breath before the storm
that hit all night last night drew back. Midmorning
windows streaked with mud like sides of ears. How long

the journey? Sails, the windowpanes the black
thick tarp that kept the woodpile. Dry
Southern wind, in minutes clothes bone-hard, clamped
to the line. Clouds heaving in. The sky, the sky, who did arrive

to kiss the eye behind the windswept sheet? Who was it, solo
no longer, shy and desirous to be clean? What song
arose, what crust between the lids
spat and forgot? I woke, my fingers in my eyes

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556591266
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	05/01/1999
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Leda and Her Swan

You have red toenails, chestnut
hair on your calves, oh let
me love you, the fathers
are lingering in the background
nodding assent.

I dream of you
shedding calico from
slow-motion breasts, I dream
of you leaving with
skinny women, I dream you know.

The fathers are nodding like
overdosed lechers, the fathers approve
with authority: Persian emperors, ordering
that the sun shall rise
every dawn, set
each dusk. I dream.

White bathroom surfaces
rounded basins you
stand among
loosening
hair, arms, my senses.

The fathers are Dresden figurines
vestigial, anecdotal
small sculptures shaped
by the hands of nuns. Yours

crimson-tipped, take no part in that
crude abnegation. Scarlet

liturgies shake our room, amaryllis blooms
in your upper thighs, water lily
on mine, fervent delta

the bed afloat, sheer
linen billowing
on the wind: Nile, Amazon, Mississippi.

Amazon Twins

I

You wanted to compare, and there
we were, eyes on each eye, the lower
lids
squinting
suddenly awake

though the light was dim. Looking away
some time ago, you'd said
the eyes are live
animals, domiciled in our head
but more than the head

is crustacean-like. Marine
eyes, marine
odors. Everything live
(tongue, clitoris, lip and lip)
swells in its moist shell. I remember the light

warped round our bodies finally
crustal, striated with sweat.

II

In the gazebo-like café, you gave
me food from your plate, alert
to my blood-sweet hungers
double-edged
in the glare of the sun's
and our own
twin heat. Yes, there
we were, breasts on each side, Amazons
adolescent at twenty-nine

privileged
to keep the bulbs and to feel the blade
swell, breath-sharp
on either side. In that public place

in that public place.

Triple Muse

I

Three of us sat
in the early summer, our instruments
cared for, our bodies dark

and one stirred the stones on
the earthen platter, till the salt
veins aligned, and she read the cast:

Whatever is past
and has come to an end
cannot be brought back by sorrow

II

False things
we've made seem true, by charm, by music. Faked
any trick when it pleased us

and laughed, faked
too when it didn't. The audience couldn't tell, invoking
us absently, stroking their fragile beards, waiting

for inspiration
served up like dinner, or sex. Past. Here
each of us knows, herself, the mineral-bright path.

III

It's been said, we are of one mind.
It's been said, she is happy whom
we, of the muses, love.

Spiral Mountain: the cabin
full of our tools: guitar, tape deck, video
every night

stars we can cast the dice by. We are
of one mind, tuning
our instruments to ourselves, by our triple light.

Io

One would know nothing.
One would begin by the touch
return to her body,
one would forget
even the three
soft cages
where summer lasts.

One would regret nothing.
One would first touch the mouth
then the warm
pulsing places that wait
that wait
and the last song around them
a shred of light.

A crumpled apron, a headcloth, a veil.
One would keep nothing.

By the still mouths of fear
one would listen. Desire
would spill past each lip
and caution. That which is light
would remain.

That which is
still would grow fertile.

Thetis

No. I'm not tired, the tide
is late tonight, go
with your sisters, go
sleep, go play.
             No? Then come
closer, sit here, look

where we strung the fruit, hammocks of
apples, dates, orange peel. Look
at the moon
lolling between them, indolent
as a suckled breast. Do you understand

child, how the moon, the tide
is our own
image? Inland
the women call themselves Tidal Pools
call their water jars Women, insert
sponge and seaweed
under each curly, triangular thatch. Well

there's the salt lip, finally
drawing back. You must understand
everything that caresses you

will not be like this
moon-bright water, pleasurable, fertile
only with mollusks and fish. There are still
other fluids, fecund, tail-whipped
with seed. There are ways
to evade them. Go
get a strand

of kelp. Fold it, down in your palm
like a cup, a hood. Good.
Squat down beside me.
Facing the moon.

Dactyls

THE PALM

Her furrowed heart, her brittle life, her mind
dissected by fate. Are these adjectives permanent?
She frowns
at her open hand.

LINE OF THE HEART

Up the long hill, the earth rut steamed in the strange sun.
We, walking between its labia, loverlike, palm to palm.

LINE OF THE MIND

The branch splits in two: I will eat both the male
and the female fruit. Gnaw back the fork to its simple crotch.

LIFE LINE

Metropolis: Mother
city. Whose columns, bulging
vertically like braced thighs, endure
the centuries, and the brittle light.

THE FATE

By the left lintel, lavender. Through the left
lobe, twin cymbals. Who dares stop hungry
Fate from her salad, her crazy
leveling meal.

Table of Contents

Caritas	3
Beginning with O	11
Sometimes, as a child	13
TWELVE ASPECTS OF GOD	15
Leda and Her Swan	17
Amazon Twins	19
Triple Muse	21
Io	23
Thetis	24
Dactyls	26
Circe	27
Maenad	29
Aphrodite	30
Calypso	32
Demeter	33
Artemis	35
THE KNIFE AND THE BREAD	37
betrothal / the bride's lament	39
plunging into the improbable	42
Love Lines	45
memory piece / for Baby Jane	48
the knife & the bread	51
INNOCENCE	55
Innocence	57
Four Beginnings / for Kyra	60
Song / for Sanna	62
Lullaby	64
Blues / for J.C	66
Bitterness	67
Beauty and the Beast	68
Cinderella	69
Rapunzel	71
Sleeping Beauty	73
Rumpelstiltskin	75
Little Red Riding Hood	79
Snow White	81
Soie Sauvage	85
Oregon Landscape with Lost Lover	87
Five Interior Landscapes	88
Sweeping the Garden	91
Woman with Child	92
Foreigner	96
Landscape with Leaves and Figure	97
Landscape with Poets	99
Landscape with Next of Kin	100
Landscape with Driver	102
Banner	103
Lenten	104
Roadside	105
Blockade	106
Landscape with Mantra	107
Absence of Noise Presence of Sound	108
Landscape without Touch	110
Still Life	111
Landscape with Angels	112
Prayer with Martial Stance	113
Fast	114
Namaste	116
P.S	128
Pastoral Jazz	129
Elegy	131
Body and Soul	132
Soothsaying	133
Away from Water	134
Out of Mind	135
Buenos Días	136
Easter	137
Body	138
Host	139
Bride	140
Sea Change	142
Instruction	148
Emblem	149
Mosaic	150
Heart Believes with Blows	151
Home Movies	153
Epithalamion	160
Aubade	162
Sugar	164
Ode	165
Pastoral Jazz	168
If I Yes	169
Backgammon	171
Imaginary Sufi Garden	177
Mornings Remembering Last Nights	179
Diagram of Abandoned Mosque	181
Charisma	182
Perennial	183
Moon Conjunct Ace of Cups	184
Jewel Lotus Harp	186
from Black Holes, Black Stockings	193
"A cry comes out and is the changing"	195
"The hundreds of leaves inside our dreams"	195
"Remember how close we sat in Sifnos"	197
"The gods are never the same but remain"	197
"They drove to the far side of the island"	199
"If we were as ferries and lived only a summer"	200
"Like the flesh of Venus is mud"	201
Moon	203
Perpetua	209
PART I
Mercy	213
Evensong	214
The Masseuse	217
Stars in Your Name	219
Mitosis	221
No Harm Shall Come	223
Eye of Heart	225
After Lunch	227
Périsprit	228
On Earth	229
The Pealing	231
Parity	235
Eros	236
The Massacre	240
The Moon of Mind against the Wooden Louver	244
Touched	246
Walk on the Water	248
Before the Elegy	249
Native	251
After The Little Mariner	253
PART II
Amberose Triste	257
Next to the Café Chaos	258
To Draw the Warmth of Flesh from Subtle Graphite	259
Between Two Seas	260
She Loves	262
With God	264
Etymology	265
Tryst	266
For Every Heart	267
Field	268
Lying In	275
The Way a Child Might Believe	277
Attitude	278
Days of Argument and Blossom	279
PART III
Lumens	283
The Choir	289
The Choir	291
The Continuo	292
Offertory	294
Grace	296
The Contemplation	297
Paper Flute	299
By Whose Hand	300
Family	302
Collaborations with T Begley	303
from SAPPHO'S GYMNASIUM	305
Helen Groves	307
Vowel Imprint	313
Flower Parry	316
Your Sacred Idiot with Me	321
Joinery	323
Digestibles of Sun	327
Insomniac of a Zen-Garden Fruit	331
Photovoltaic	332
Sappho's Gymnasium	334
ITHACA: LITTLE SUMMER IN WINTER	339
LARK	347
PHOTO GENIC	351
NOTES	355
ABOUT THE AUTHOR	363

Editorial Reviews

Copper Canyon claims that Broumas is "the embodiment of Sappho in our time"—for once a publisher's blurb is entirely true—and the key word is "embodiment." Poetry comes from the body, and Broumas excels as a singer of the body. "addicted to ecstasy",..."Giving/voice" to the sexual is what Broumas does, and not merely in terms of the body's "astounding organs," though she does that with texture and verve, but through a multidimensional, multilingual awareness of the life of the soul. Her work is profoundly spiritual—"I slept with Buddha—dog-eyes / everywhere dog-eyes / eager to be blessed"—and everywhere in her work the presence of soul as a living dimension is felt.
—The Women's Review of Books

Adrian Oktenberg