footnotes to algebra by eileen r. tabios book preview

7/31/2019 Footnotes to Algebra by Eileen r. Tabios Book Preview

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FOOTNOTES TO ALGEBRAUncollected Poems 1995-2009

Eileen R. Tabios

BlazeVOX [books]


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Copyright 2009 by Eileen R. Tabios

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the authorspermission, except for quotations in reviews.

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza

Front Cover Image: a tattoo on the arm of John Bloomberg-Rissman entitled Secret Lifeof Angelus Novus (Skinglyph/Twombly View) (Tatt #1). A photograph of the tattoo is partof the anthology 1000 Views of Girl Singing(Leafe Press, U.K., 2009) featuringresponses to, or translations of, Eileen R. Tabios poem The Secret Life of An Angel.The tattooed text is from Walter Benjamins ber den Begriff der Geschichte (On theConcept of History), Thesis 9. The background is a detail from Cy Twomblys paintingAutunno (no. III of his Quattro Stagioni), taken from the cover of the catalogue to anexhibition at theTate Modern.

First EditionISBN: 9781935402046Library of Congress Control Number 2009932640

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Pressed Petals

Mon Ami, you want to make a memory:

You write Dear John to the over-the-top sun for going over the top:

Cherie, you want to listen to Bon Jovi because you love their name:

They are giving you a memory (I want to give you a memory by writing to you):

Somewhere, a hyacinth blushes to pink, violetdies as white

You want to be a moment of ecstasy by becoming part of a moment of ecstasywhen you remain alone by choice:

Evening. Desk lamp blooms

The page ends and you made a blossomingmemory you cannot remember:

You want to make a memory:


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Maid of Honor

If I fell off a tree, would anyone notice?

Would anyone cut down the forest?

Would you still publicize global warming?

Would you still look beyond mortality?

"I would never consider a parrotfor a pet as it would livelonger than I, being human, could muster..."

Then bury me please under a canopy of red rosesnever mind the flock of white doves

A dozen canons synchronized will do

For, somewhere on this planet, an acornis penetrating sodden earth

there's no need to apologize for dancing

from one's hipsroundly! eyes closedand taking up as much spaceas one wants from the dance floorat someone else's wedding


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Pygmalions Embrace

One man, Pygmalion, who had seen these womenLeading their shameful lives, shocked at the vices

Nature has given the female dispositionOnly too often, chose to live alone,To have no woman in his bed. But meanwhileHe made, with marvelous art, an ivory statuefrom Ovids Metamorphoses

1.These are my last wordsbefore I become stone

the same color as the ivoryvirgin known as Beauty

defined by crumbling pagesgasping, Her name is Galatea

2.A god stopped playing(for once) to manifest mercy

A god blinked long lashesfor a statue to step down

from a pedestal also carvedby my withered hands

The statue blinked long lashesShe whispered her name: Galatea

3.

Her mother was her father wasmy instrument carving her curves

Who could have foretoldshe would transcend my grief


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over the women shethat is, Iemulated through ivory and stone

4.She reddened her lips into rosesShe revealed her breasts for moons

She opened eyes fearlessly at the sunShe laughed as she spread her thighs

5.These are my last wordsbefore I sculpt myself into limestone

a chateaux as moonwashedas the ivory whose purity I formed

into the virgin I desired. ButI accept her departure from my

opened hands as the price for tastinghuman lips before they now proclaim

Poems make stones breathe. Within my eyes

poetry, nature, art and wine converge

for a life beyond stone. I live beyondstone by immortalizing her within my fold

an embrace formed by stone wallsas white as she on a pedestal

mythologized as the perfect womaneven as her flesh wrinkles, then cracks,

for living in the world, becomingof the world, forming the Real.


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Aurora

wake to a scent

of the woman you never were

one proactively believes

no memory is false

yesterday, the sand

shimmered with black diamonds

once, you opened

eyes and still loved me

tomorrow, the world

will form one black diamond

once, I loved

you back with much helplessness

and fear was only as real

as a black diamond


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Birthday Poem, 9/11/2008: A Re-Visionwritten after and during Heaven and Earth in Jest in Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Wind remains terrifiedrejected breath of unblinking sun

Those days of perfumeshollowing throatsevaporated now into terrified winds

There, a branch knots itselfinto the darkness of your eye (as well, yours)futile against what unblinking sun reveals

Dust clouds keep recurring

in the East, in the Westheaven, earth and all in betweenas men battle each othernot injest although Allahin the Koran once raisedthe possibility of creation as a joke

What exactly is the redemptionfound in the canary singingatop a skull? Whose emptiedeye sockets became polished to ivory

by these terrified winds?

Cruelty is a mystery,and the waste of pain,says the pilgrim at Tinker CreekStill, that infernal canary sings

The mockingbird can suddenly plummetbut just a tic before earths brutal kissit saves itself by unfurling wingsDoes it mock the terror of winds?Yes, I think it does. Yes

it mocks me into stepping backanother step to widen the landscapefighting my blindness. Until I finally


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see beyond the fires and tinderwhose future will be sparks, then flames:

the planet, this molten planetwith its ever-terrorized winds,remains mostly water, inescapable water,and will remain mostly water until

we can believe once morelightning is benevolent.

Without the image of cracked skiesthe Ancients would not have knownto carve lightning marks, long groovesalong the wooden shafts of their arrows.

The function of lightning marks is this:if the arrow fails to kill the game,blood from a deep wound will channelalong the lightning mark, streak downthe arrow shaft, and spatter to the ground,laying a trail dripped on broad-leaves,on stones, that the barefoot and tremblingarcher can follow into whatever deepor rare wilderness it leads.

Then, the canary shall punctuate its

song: Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!

while the wind continues blowing, terrified,while soldiers continue dying on dusty roads.The canary shall sing, hopping from one skull to another,

for some of us are still struggling to remain infantswho have just learned to hold up our heads.So we stare about us in honest bewildermentaiming sincerely to learn. We want to explore

the neighborhood, view where we have been setdown so precipitately. We still lack the cocksureair of squatters who have come to feelthey own the place, and through this fakerybecome politicians. We are still ableto track blood, hew to our original intentions


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We still know better than to write the poemas a solution.

The wind and mockingbird are nothuman

But we are all birthed with a certain memorystill undiluted by the same living that leachespoetry from the truism: We are all poets.We arrived with the primal memory of certain angelschoosing to fall and refusing to unfurl wings

in order to become Human. Thus:

the fearful strategyfearful but, unlike with cruelty, nota waste of paint

for every day, a Why?


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Candle

No boats burn here

nor birds drop

nor do waves abort here

from oil slicks deadening water

Only the sky burnshere and only from receivingthe sun liquefying

into satin ribbonsas it descends

But as above, as below here

there where the ocean fringes its hem

here where Golden Dragon stands

on one foot by the water's edge

the sword invisible

over his closed eyes

burning their gaze into mine

to light as the sun ascends

the votive candle

now flickering within my navel


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Montana: A Novel

Thisis the worstcountry for

extremes.Fortunately, I loveweathers swiftly cruel

changes.They make mefeel this

country

isnt just flatplacid landscape

thatits as violentas dark

Doonecountry or anywild Cornish

coastyou read aboutin English

novels.I feel youlistening, listening

breathingscent of black

earth dampening


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The Artichoke Heart(April 2009)

Artichokes are growingin my garden

I harvested oneprematurelyif one is to believethe boiled result(I think it was the eagernessnot my lack of culinary skill)

Perhaps I'm eagerfor summer to bloom fully

to be sweating out sweatingout!recent troubles

through the hundred-degree daysof Napa Valley summer


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Anti-Winter: The Double Life Of An Angelafter Eileen Tabios' "The Secret Life of An Angel" after Jose Garcia Villas Girl Singing

Girl singing. Day.Winter's old

man

reaches for immortalitywith alengthening

shadow despite myskippingaway.

Girl singing! Iinsist. Day!Cheerfully

chant to keepthe cloudsfrom

dimming the sun,from milkingskies

of their cobaltgazes bespeakingpurity.

He has wornmany guises,and

I have let him:the originalangel

who fell andfell"gloriousride,


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he has whisperedfor hisspell.

This is agame ofpoker

I have lost,but nolonger

wish to play,I reply.Girl

singing. Day! Iproclaim: Youcannot

scoff, my secretdemon. ForI

played with highstakes while

you

merely watched. Girlsinging. Day.I

risked everything whileyou hedged.I

sang notes onlyvirgin boyscan


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muster, only fearfuldogs canhear.

I lost myselfin everyone's"valley

of evil" butmy wingsunfurled

to make merise. Unlikeyours,

mine did notbetray. Girlsinging.

Day. Beloved wingsunfurled asI

changed my mindfor Heavennearer

than mere breathaway. Girlsinging:

Day...oh. Daaaaaaaaay...oh. Girlgo singingDaaaaaaaaaaayay....oh!


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Poem Du Jour

Poor Rimbaud didn't know how to livebut knew how to act

from "Practical Water" by Brenda Hillman

A dream counseled (as it has many times before)I can create a poetry collection

entitled "Divorce"and it would be a marvelous thing, that creek

But my marriage would not surviveits poetic process

I know how to live:Muse: Go to Hell.


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Gridswritten while reading Michelle Naka Pierces Beloved Integer

1.wasp

nesting inscreen door reminds

I am incelsius, youFahrenheit

2.Physics

posits twoobjects cannot inhabit

the same space.Thus, IwriteUS

3.Are specifics theorigin of

us?

How is lovecounted (for_______)?

4.An unknown percentageof forgettingI

miss YOU

5.


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Howdid wecome to this

findingeach otherthrough writing poems?

Not to sayI findmyself

H/E/R/E. I dofind thatportion

of myself whooccupies thatSpaceWeCallUs.

6.CONCLUSION MASQUERADING AS POSTSCRIPT

Barry shares an April 6, 2004 article from The Guardian which partly says

Scientists examining whatthey thoughtwere

Petrarchs remains discoveredthe skullbelongs

to someone else.And they

suspectit could bethat ofEve


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the nickname forevery womandesignated

by history tobe MissAnonymous.

7.Youread apoem to make

everythingWHOLE

I, ergo, writepoems fragmentations ofshadow


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Mountain Momfor Zaheras birth mother

Everything about lifecan be taught

by mountains:

it is easierto walkrun!upthan to descend

as when youraped in a dark (of course, dark) alleygave up your daughterfor a movie star's in-progress family

The sun kisses its message:

Regret will not be your only legacy.


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Dark Chocolate Valentine

Roses gettin' rabidViolets vomit rueMouth me some chocolateOr I'll cannibal you...!


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Eggs: A Pulp Fiction

"The vulgar boil,"proclaims Alexander Popein The Second Book of Horace,while "the learned roast an egg."

The ancient shepherdsignored the Pope,cooking their eggswithout fireby hoisting theminto a slingthey whirled so rapidlyover their heads

air friction heatedthe eggs to hard.

This nugget comes fromSoyer Shilling's Cooking For the Poorpublished in 1854.

Peg Bracken, in her memoirA Window Over the Sink,suggests modernizingSoyer's impoverished title

to the text of a sign hangingover a gift shop's door:

Shoplifters Will Be HappilyBeaten To A Pulp!


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Jeopardys Secret Ingredients

? Afterwards, you must temper it with a widows peak.

? Then you lasso the whelps left ear if you can. If not, freeze the mutt in a vat ofmilk.

? Concurrently, you cannot privilege the chaff.

? Next, store it for 45 days in a dim, cool cupboard to force the suns rise.

? Dont forget to exhale as you stain the cuffs with the juice of pressed alabaster.

? After two-thirds are set aside for slum tenants, you can attack the olives withsugar.

? Never allow the ingredients to collude despite their shared bowl carved froman endangered species of mahogany.

? The secret is to deliberately forget what I omitted when its slip of paperdropped through the hole in my scarlet velvet pocket.


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Please Match The Question With Its Answer

Question Answer

1) Who betrayed the butler with mother-of-pearl cufflinks? A) atolls in the South

Pacific

2) What sets milk aflame? B) pastilles de leche

3) Where did the burglar hide the white-on-white painting? C) bon mot

4) How will you make me Sublime!? D) pootietang

5) Why did the King choose the porcupine? E) being attached as only

an orgasm-less woman can:with a vengeance (e.g.Simone de Beavoir to Sartre)

6) When will you concede to my blindfold? F) silk hems

footnotes to algebra by eileen r. tabios book preview

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