The Production of Space
By Hollie Adams
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Can we invent spaces
not similar to something just similar or produce a devouring force— dark space where things cannot be put okay Can we recreate a daisy’s white tongues a wide moment is this science or one of the lesser arts I needed this today what else barrow pits along the road swollen hills falling in folds birds hysterical in the trees a certain nest this bulky shadow an ale-coloured river How the hell should I know what you’re capable of how you’ll react upon witnessing your own dazzling feats so you made something from nothing big deal I have done that thousands of times in reverse Never again will I forget that mountains monstrous in their generosity have always reared themselves Shoulder SeasonBy Hollie Adams
Maybe I’m doing it all wrong
by it all, I mean gesture in any direction Don’t you know I’m trying to make everything beautiful—not just space but time too It is tiresome business, there are telephone wires every which way, the occlusion of a stop sign, these modern cars no one cares for, yet here I am, eye panning the horizon where the sunrise was promised— just like clockwork, they say. This is what happens when you hand me the reins—no, thrust— all the reins, the reins that control the other reins even, so when I appear to be doing nothing at all, it too is a kind of work And all that time spent driving because there’s always something worth seeing somewhere, but never where we are— we can’t afford beauty all of the time— and I am waiting for that moment that feels like golden hour, shoulder season, a lobster boat bobbing away in Rockport, Maine where the water is a color I don’t have words for but the hull is identifiably cadmium yellow and that’s a color I’ve been waiting to see Now we have something to show for ourselves Something like a souvenir, something like that perfect sand dollar I bought in Key Largo when I couldn’t find one on the beach—perfect or no. What a relief to have something like that. A Modern PoemBy Hollie Adams
This poem
is a modern poem with its use of the word sunbright, dark heart referring to something heartless, as in: at the dark heart of this poem, there is a pomegranate or persimmon. The scent of cardamom, camphor. The sound of birdsong. It is fleshy, this modern poem. It is pulpy. It careens, it lists. Something limns something else. This poem is neoclassical as in: one of the Greeks is here— Demeter or Persephone. The word kite used as a verb. There is a list: mundane things the river proffers up at Demeter’s feet: the skeleton of a carp, the sunbright shell of a quail’s egg, a rotting pomegranate, its dark heart blooming pulpy, fleshy in her hands. In this modern poem, the air is ossified, the sky a horrid mirror on the ceiling, and in it something must unfurl: Demeter’s hair kites in the wind. The modern poem marvels at the ease of the lift, holds its breath— Demeter’s feet becoming anchors, rooting. Is it enough to keep her in this modern poem? Or is she thinking already of golden grain, a thrice-plowed field? Hollie Adams is the author of the novel Things You’ve Inherited from Your Mother (NeWest Press) and the chapbook Deliver Me from Swedish Furniture (Zed Press), shortlisted for a bpNichol chapbook award. She is the current fiction editor of The Windsor Review, and her writing has appeared in Carousel, The Malahat Review, Grain, Room, prairie fire, Contemporary Verse 2, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. Originally from Windsor, Ontario, she now finds home in Bangor, Maine, teaching at the University of Maine.
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