her book | poems by Éireann lorsung
DESCRIPTION
From the poet who brought us Music For Landing Planes By, Éireann Lorsung’s luminous voice is distilled through multiple unnamed female speakers in this, her second collection. Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, Her book crosses distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, their individual and shared experiences, and the bonds that bring them together. This is also a book about translation — of experience into art, of knowledge across time and space — and conversation — with, for instance, work by Kiki Smith, widely known as a feminist artist. Lorsung writes additionally about her time spent in England and friendships she formed with women there.More info about the book here: http://milkweed.org/shop/product/323/her-book/TRANSCRIPT
© 2013, Text by Éireann LorsungAll rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews,
no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
(800) 520-6455www.milkweed.org
Published 2013 by Milkweed EditionsPrinted in the United States of America
Cover design by Gretchen Achilles/Wavetrap DesignCover art © Kiki Smith and Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc.
Author photo by Jonathan Vanhaelst13 14 15 16 17 5 4 3 2 1
first edition
Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Driscoll Foundation; the Jerome Foundation;
the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the
Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit www.milkweed.org.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lorsung, Éireann, 1980- [Poems. Selections] Her book : poems / Éireann Lorsung.—First edition. pages cm ISBN 978-1-57131-433-8 (alk. paper) I. Title. PS3612.O77H47 2013 2012042168 811›.6—dc23
Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition
of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Her book was printed on acid-free 30% postconsumer-waste paper by Versa Press, Inc.
27
First principles
In the beginning was the labyrinth.
It was the size of a continent, the insideof a jar she carried in her shoulderbag, swinging while she walked.
Sometimes she didn’t know it was therebut underneath everything wallswould rise, holdup construction of new roads, and she would reknow: it was there, shehad seen it. The labyrinth covered
everything in questions.It opened windows to the seawhere no sea should have been.She entered it daily:
she never wore a watch, she carriedNothing with her, or she carriedher knitting, she emptiedthe canvas bag at every turnand filled it with sand, guitarstrings, replicas of Machu Picchuand Neruda’s house. Nothing
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was enough. The labyrinthfollowed her from one edgeof the world to another.It was all around her, like her mother’s love.Every morning she reenteredthe labyrinth from the labyrinth.The smell of the sea that wasn’t there.The clicking shadows of laurel treesand their scent; she was fullwithout eating. Outside were shores and strawboats and the ends of strings leadingfrom the center. The jarshe carried was lighter and lighter as the labyrinth went out into the world.
29
Historical fragment
She began to find playing cards everywhere and so she took to looking for the ones she liked best (the Queen of Hearts, the Ace of Hearts). She found cards with dotted designs, cards prisoners had drawn by hand, Bicycle cards, pinochle cards, cards from airline passengers’ handbags, cards given out by realtors as mnemonics for the houses they tried to sell. She found several cards from the 1700s. She rarely had to look for them: they were stuck in hedges, strewn across otherwise tidy front lawns. Early in the morning she would walk out of the little brick house and there would be one lying on the pavement or floating innocently down from the chess-queen chimney pots. No one seemed to miss the cards she took. They were all playing with full decks.
30
Pinkfor Sriparna
Everything turning
to fuchsias hanging over stone walls
a deep, bright color, eight stamens
dianthus, stitchwort,the smell of cinnamon
the inside of a kimono a surprise of cherry blossoms & shibori
sweetshop’s matching jarsof rhubarb-custard candymica-flecked dust for eyelids—
crushing petals in a pocketwas like blushing—
She wanted to touch everythingover & over
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A collection of beauties at the height of their popularityfor Mulysa
Ghosts like young hazelnuts, lichentrailing from trees, checkerlilies, whitecolumbine that gets toolittle sun.
A park in the middleof a city, a mile,a fairy tale.
Here are two girlswith round fansrabbits on leashesstriped socksone glimpse of eyeletwool that scratches.
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And you have a collarI love, red dots& yellow dots, a gray field.
My egg-blue dress,your chartreuse sweater,satin hairbow.
Piles of thread, cuttings,velvet nap rubbedback with a hand,corner of moon in an upstairs window.
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And so the last day came, and the last hour of the last dayfor Shani
Our dreams of snow—
It was as though we were on a ship in the middle of the prairie
It was as though the housewas sighing or breathing
Stocks of flower seed, vegetable seed, wool blankets, quilts our mothers made,
pressed leaves, books of poems, teain packets, sugar flavored
with petals, paper birds and animalswith pin joints, scissors, glue,
paints, teacups, colored shoes, a pileof silk scraps.
35
Bee summer
The basement roomlined with sun
full summergreen
When clover isbees are
Air & pollen in the lung
Bees will always be therewild rose pinkening outside
and noweven in winter
there is no winter
36
City pleasure
It sweetens everything: a busker’s movement, A chord to C chord, Porte de Saint-Ouen, the first heady rush of cars, gray lifting off the city.
If you have never been to Paris, go there in November, wear a heavy scarf printed with shibori, wear an overcoat. Walk along the Seine, past booksellers, souvenir shops, women wearing red, and Notre Dame.
The rer through Saint-Denis.
Sitting near people you don’t know, you will want to touch them. Your body will hold itself from touching them.
Leaves from plane trees yellow in the gutter. In Montmartre, the same leaves yellow against sky.
—I love what I love for what I know’s inside.
37
England, or the continent I had in mind when I came herefor Caroline
Every bird is a sister of mine—can you believeI never saw horses running before I came to this island,and nothing but their own good sense keeps themfrom falling into the ocean? At the edge of your country along train tracks that run from Devonto Cornwall, someone set up a howl and it’s been going longer than we remember, or our mothersremember, or their mothers.Where else could a woman turninto flowering rosebush? Allso peripheral, the crooked edges maps show— the limit is sensate here where I can never travel all nightand the next day— I brought you what has bound you,a piece of cloth in tatting thread and colorsI found here—loosestrife, sorrel, the guelder rose,wood anemone—a tapestry barring girlhood to onefield, long stripe of a neighbor’s plow turningland just over the woven branches: earthto earth.
38
The sandwich cart rattles by, you stackcups on a tray. Meanwhile, unobtrusively, the airdiffuses particles, the sky is pinked. This earth. This shining in the sea.
39
Sweetsfor Kezia, Emilse, Caroline, Adity & Eva
In the high windows, contrails; a severely English blue.There were trees growing out of buildings.
We could touch one another’s shoulders and we did.Flowers on our desks in old jars, postcards,
pictures, poems, biscuits, cups of tea, train tripson a Saturday,
ridiculous photographs, sleep, posesin government-regulation photobooths
with masks on—we knew nothing had to happen.
: :
The tracks of shore birds were a cloth no onehad woven and we couldn’t name.
We made a text with the passage of our hands.We were near each other with music and in silence.
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There were rarely places we could be at home.
Although we missed where we were born.Although dispersal was the ultimate answer.
We held hands, borrowed clothes, sat together, watchedfor stars or hot-air balloons, birds, satellites.
Did not expect them. There they were.