Sun in Days Read online

  Sun

  in

  Days

  POEMS

  MEGHAN O’ROURKE

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  FOR JIM

  CONTENTS

  Unforced Error

  I

  Self-Portrait as Myself

  Sun in Days

  Dread

  Mnemonic

  Addict Galerie

  The Night Where You No Longer Live

  Ever

  Mistaken Self-Portrait as Persephone in the Desert

  Expecting

  Miscarriage

  Mistaken Self-Portrait as Mother of an Unmade Daughter

  At Père Lachaise

  Interlude (Posthumous)

  II

  What It Was Like

  Idiopathic Illness

  Human-Sized Pain

  Poem (Problem)

  A Note on Process

  III

  Some Aspects of Red and Black in Particular

  Mistaken Self-Portrait as Demeter in Paris

  Poem of Regret for an Old Friend

  Mistaken Self-Portrait as Meriwether Lewis

  Unnatural Essay

  Navesink

  The Body in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

  Mortals

  Poem for My Son

  The Window at Arles

  How to Be

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

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  Sun

  in

  Days

  Unforced Error

  Once: those long wet Vermont summers.

  No money, nothing to do but read books, swim

  in the river with men in their jean shorts,

  then play bingo outside the church, celebrating when we won.

  Nothing seemed real to me and it was all very alive.

  It took that long to learn how wrong I was—

  over the rim of the horizon the sun burns.

  Heidegger: “Every man is born as many men

  and dies as a single one.”

  The bones in us still marrowful.

  The moon up there, too, an arctic sorrow.

  I’m sorry, another Scotch? Some nuts?

  I used to think pressing forward was the point of life,

  endlessly forward, the snow falling, gaudily falling.

  I made a mistake. Now I have a will. It says when I die

  let me live. A white shirt, bare legs, bones beneath.

  Numbers on a board. A life can be a lucky streak,

  or a dry spell, or a happenstance.

  Yellow raspberries in July sun, bitter plums, curtains in wind.

  I

  Self-Portrait as Myself

  And now I, Meghan, have grown tired, have come

  to the limits of my aesthetic fidelity. It is nearly summer,

  and summer seems shorter to me

  and winter longer and longer, as if life with

  its inevitable accumulation of griefs

  shifts time the way the myth said: casting a layer

  of snow over all our losses. I want a daughter, but

  the daughter I’ll never have I can’t imagine

  more than I already have. I’d like to say,

  these are the stories my mother read me,

  and she is gone, and six decades

  pass fast, so much faster than the mind absorbs

  all the distorted love it feels for the world,

  all the knowledge it accrues and wants to continue

  to accrue, and in not being able to imagine her—

  Stop. Stop here, and feel the light and the heat through

  the window by my desk and remember the fields

  I’ve stood in, the prickling of time at my leg,

  the propeller planes hymning past, the daughter I lost

  by not making her—the RNA, the tethered alleles,

  the whorls of her fingers like the twisting

  clouds above, the high and possible

  voice I’ll never hear except within my secret ears.

  Sun in Days

  1.

  I tried to live that way for a while, among

  the trees, the green breeze,

  chewing Bubblicious by the edge of the pool

  The book open on my chest, a towel

  at my back the diving board thwoking,

  and leaving never arrivedCut it out

  my mother saidmy brother

  clowning around with a water gunCut it out.

  The planes arrowed into silence, fourteen,

  fifteen, sixteen, always coming

  home from summerover the bridge to Brooklyn.

  The father stabbed on Orange Street,

  the Betamax in the trash,

  the Sasha doll the dog chewed up, hollow

  plastic arms gaping. Powdered pink lemonade,

  tonguing the sweet grainsliquid-thick.

  I could stand in that self for years

  wondering is it better to

  anticipate than to ageImagining

  children with three different men,

  a great flood that would destroy

  your possessionsand free you to wander.

  Bathing suits and apples and suntan oil

  and a mother bending over you

  shadow of her face on yours. It’s gone,

  that way, the breeze, the permanent pool.

  A father saying “ghost” and the sheets

  slipping off the oak tree’s bough.

  When I wake, leaves

  in the water. You could say green

  forever and not be lying.

  2.

  The pond near the house in Maine

  where we lived for one year

  to “get away” from the citythe pond

  where the skaterson Saturdays came,

  red scarvesthrough white snow,

  voices drawing near andpulling

  away, trees against the clouds. Living

  off the land for a while. Too hard

  in the end my father said. What did he say?

  Forget ityou weren’t listeningHe wore

  fishing overalls most days and smelled of guts.

  Our shouts slipping, the garbage cans

  edging the white scar pond,

  so many days like secrets about to be

  divulged . . .White snow;

  to stink of fish guts butto be trying

  to live:the pond near the house

  and the sound of voicesdrawing near.

  As you aged you got distracted, indebted.

  In the hospital around my mother

  the machinesbeeped,

  the long leads of the heart monitor,

  drooping parabolas.

  It’s not worth dying forshe said. What

  was it she meant? Swollen shells, the desiccated brown

  seedpods we used to pinch onto our noses

  and skate aboutputting on airs.

  Then the books opened

  their pages and with our red woolen

  scarves flyingand the Freezy Freakies’

  once-invisible hearts reddening

  into the cold we disappeared.

  Evian bottles skitter against the chain-link fence.

  It’s gonethat waythe green

  planes arrowing into silencegum wrappers

  slipping to the ground.

  O wild West windbe thou our friend

  and blow away the trash.

  Salvage us fromthe heap of our making and

  Cut it out my mother saidStop worrying

  about the future, it doesn’t

  belong to us and
we don’t belong to it.

  3.

  The surface more slippery, slick

  and white the ice. I stand at the pond’s edge

  gather the informationdarkening there

  hello algaehello fish pond

  my mind in the depthsgoing.

  On the beach I dig, tunnel

  to the hands of the woman who stitched

  this red shirtdigging all the way to China.

  It got so easy toget used to it,

  the orchestration of meaning

  against the night, life

  a tower you could climb on

  not a junk heappale picture books

  yellowing on the shelves rusting

  steel mills on the edge of town. It gets

  soI close my eyes

  and walk along the hospital hall.

  The iris quivering in the March light,

  a nurse taking my mother’s pulse

  not paid enough to help us

  as we wished to be helped.And your hope

  left behindturning the pages of magazines,

  the models in Prada. As a girl

  it was a quest, to feel exploded every second,

  Pudding Popsand Vietnam vets

  standing on the corner shaking their Styrofoam

  cups.Holding her

  cup my mother stands, petting the dog,

  it’s 1982the sun tunneling inshe drinks her coffee

  Cut it out orForget it orHello.

  Look, I’ve made a telephone for us.

  Put that cup to your ear, and I’ll put it to mine,

  and listenI just need to find

  one of those Styrofoam cups

  and what about youwhere did you

  go what kind of night is it there

  electric synthetic blackened or burnt.

  4.

  At night the dead come to you

  distorted and bright, like an old print on a light box—

  stillhappening in a time we can’t touch.

  The hockey game on the blue

  TV glowing and slowingI come home

  to a man slumped on the couch not-quite-saying

  helloall the gone ones there

  the slap of skatesall gone

  and the commentator it’s going on forever

  the blade moving along rink

  says What a slap shot what a shot.

  You make a life, it is made of days and

  days, ordinary and subvocal, not busy

  becoming what they could be,dark furlings of

  tiny church feelingsmysterious, I mean,

  and intricate like that stain-windowed light—

  intricate and mysteriousI come home.

  We hung out on the Promenade

  after school the boys smoking

  the security systems in the Center blinkinga disco

  party blue red/blue red the East River

  below scraped skycornices and clouds

  we could hear the cars roaring across it

  taste the chemical air of the father’s offices

  where we picked them up

  for the long weekend in the Catskills

  the hum-gray computers, the IBM Selectrics, eleven, twelve,

  thirteen, riding the graffiti’d subways,

  flirting, the boysgrabbing us callingheyhey

  snapping our bras andshame.

  At night the bombmushrooming

  over the Statue of Liberty, white

  blinding everywhere.Oh, my mother said, don’t worry

  just a dreamjust a dream

  Everyone is scared of Russia

  she laughedWe used to

  have to hide under our desks!

  Forget ityou weren’t listeningI was trying

  to tell you something

  the maples bare your mother a teenager

  Come on the leaves aresliding past the window

  riding a horse into her future

  into the river where the Catholic kids sailed ice boats

  their uncles wiring cash home to Ireland.

  The future isn’t here yet, it’s always

  arrivingbut I’m holding you,

  walking the Promenade, thirty-six, thirty-seven,

  the ferry crossing the river again.

  5.

  And for a whilerain on the dirt road

  and the pastured gray horseholding Chex Mix

  up to its fuzzed mouthpockets of time

  all summereating ghosts in the arcade

  Pac-Man alive quarter after quarter

  I keep trying—Cut it outshe said and

  Forget itI was trying to tell you

  my father cooking fish in the kitchen

  licking his thumbto turn the page.

  In the meantime you try

  not to go into a kind of exile—

  Oh, you read too many books, says my friend John.

  Turn on the TV. And the small voices

  of childrenenter the room, they sound

  so narrow and light and possible. But

  don’t you thinkwe’re always making the same

  standing at the car rental

  kind of mistake we began by making

  at the last minute, rushing to call

  our parents before setting off

  for vacation.It’s warmer

  this August than it has been for decades.

  Still the sun bathing us isn’t preposterous

  or coldGrace: imagine it

  and all the afterworld fathers sleeping

  with their hair perfectlycombed

  faces mortician-clean

  unlike the ones they wore.

  In the motel Reagan on TVhis hair

  in that parted wavethe milk prices up,

  my mother says, inflationher father’s

  shipping job gone, the money gone.Key Food

  on Montague, the linoleum tiles dirty and cracked,

  the dairy case goose-pimpling my skin.

  Those tiles are still there.

  She is dead nowand so is he.

  I know it seems bare to say it

  bare tobare linoleum tiles.

  You who come after me

  I will be underfoot but

  Oh, come off it, start again. We all live

  amid surfaces andand I

  wish I had theStart overCome on thou

  Step into the street amidst

  the lightly turning trash,

  your hair lifting in the windRemember

  I have thought of you

  the lines of our skates converging

  in a future etc., etc., the past

  the repository of what can be salvaged, grace

  watering the basil

  on the windowsill, until

  the day comes oflooking back at it all,

  like a projectionist at a movie

  slipping through the reel, the stripped sound of time—

  I tried to live that way for a while

  chewing Bubblicious andspitting it out

  Only forget it youwere

  if I could hear your voiceagainI could pretend

  Rise and shine she called in the morning

  Rise and shineleaves in the waterintricate and personal

  the dying Dutch elms the cool blue

  pockets of timegum wrappers underfoot

  Sun-In bleaching our hair

  the faces they worearcade ghosts dying

  and lilacs by the door in Maine

  where she leanedclosesaid Smell

  the planes buzzeda purple lightfingers

  stickyif I could only hear it

  againyou could say foreverthe fisherman

  the empty millsthe veterans on the corner

  tonguing the sweet grains

  you could say foreverand not be lying

  Dread

  My keys jingling beside the honeysuckle

  as we walk home from dinner,

  our iPhones glittering with emails

  calling us to
the things of the world.

  The moon wired to the sky

  by all the coffee you drank.

  Another day, another year.

  On our faces, the children we’re becoming,

  those orphans—

  Mnemonic

  I look up, it’s

  September and the tree

  in the backyard’s

  fading, soon enough

  it’ll be winter,

  embered, crisp-curled

  leaves matrixed

  on the sidewalk,

  a Photoshopped

  etching. I can’t tell

  the difference anymore. What

  have I done with this year of living?

  I fretted & fanged,

  was a kind of

  slang of myself.

  Used to know how to live,

  now need a mnemonic,

  or glass-bottom

  boat tour, including

  snorkels & a printed

  index (angelfish, shark,

  love-of-your-life,

  home, catastrophe, grave).

  Or an apparatus

  for funneling the moon’s

  milk-light down

  on one’s skin.

  I see you’re really me,

  lifelike but not alive,

  an animal in a diorama.

  Wake up, you! Bursting

  from the painted hawthorn,

  unhurtable, unrealized,

  that marvelous

  thing you never

  imagined has arrived.

  Addict Galerie

  Outside my Paris sublet

  the addict paces, flicking

  her dentures in and out

  of her pink mouth, like

  a rose which is not a rose,

  and a new rocking horse

  stands in the window

  of the neighbors I watch.

  Mother, father, child,

  a son about two or so

  with blond flaking hair.

  Often they stand

  at the corner window

  as if at the prow of a ship

  and gaze down Vieille du Temple,

  talking aimlessly. I want

  this, won’t have it.

  Something about the way their life looks

  from afar, yellow-lamped and

  bound by tea and snacks and rocking horses,

  the father always working late at his desk.