at Length
Elegy for the Routine
The future wants to stay alone—
a small box with small items,
but we are broke down
to his daylight swervings,
the extension of two dimensions
and the narrows from his mouth to door.
Fricatives flick through my headset.
Unless you know he is flying
into the last part in danger
of attack from inside, unless you know
our work of slaying apparitions,
you might ask the event:
body, love, unceasing taxes,
the freeway? Every thought bright
and lost. To understand willing
we must not know our anxiety. It is punishment
to hear the swift pitch of some pauses.
I was about to go he said
and Don’t, I reply, respectful
of the code of his upkeep.
In the mornings my sister writes
with her fidgety worries. Again
the breath of the ruined clock
and we wander
the tall sound of trust as it loosens.
Is he eating?
Soon again evening and swallows,
and after most of the last laments,
we let him carry on
with his inclinations while the glass trees
keep rising,
one day and one day
toward the least. His voice unzips
the few words he has formed
for this purpose, what he says
of coming apart. All together a dictionary
of five seasons, eight years
or some other steady rate
of invisible sticking
points. After loneliness, there remains
such loneliness. We speak its narrative
every morning. I’ve had a good day
and I don’t know how to solve it.
If we must exterminate
our house-sized blame,
let the heart move
to the hereafter. Tell me to be
at the mall listening
to his slap splitting
the phone line. Every fragment of this
small story is true. Every day all its strange
exhalations. A conversation
that bends. Sometimes I can’t
identify all the right
angles, but in my notebook
I write his daily fixations. My brother says
it sounds like his brain is breaking
and the forgetting of pleasure
takes my ear. But more than that. Every line
that lets us be family. The images turn
and I hold them. I want
to repair them. If we both could
see him, he’d be sitting
in a tired suit
rattling his fingers while a trumpet shouts
the underside of awe,
of rising and letting go. The suit on the chair
as the sun nearly depleted weeps
into violet. The suit and the touch
of intrusion. We hurry off
to make words in another
room. Several people keep peering
in our windows, and we’re missing
composure. The unsaid hope
all broken. Again with
the experimental drug and how many bottles
we’ve committed to. The tablets
—white, oblong—
the mind of the suit to be worn.
Motionless, we try to stop the edges
from lurking, the crack of suspicion that keeps
aiming its brass at rows and strokes
from long ago and his inadequate
aim. All truth is the signature
static on paper, the worn suit
of the mind. What he says
is to anyone now
with its shaky brightness. The mind
is the geography. The mind is the giant
and its incessant informing
is final. Again I return
to the messages and how he wept. Desire to
tenderness. The past is bending over
to see what is no longer
there. When he is this far
out of focus, we pay for his money money
and again money. Are they poisoning—?
No, now I see the corner,
muttering. Around him, x-ed selves
who keep tossing him stones.
This means you will think it hurts
to love. But no. This is the tall sound
of summer getting paler. How do I know
that this man with redundance will still
breathe at the shore
of his thoughts? Why water again? I want
correct answers. Then calm. And the afternoons
leak to a house of ranunculi
or ubiquitous Florida. Enough later
to care. He wouldn’t go
and then wouldn’t not. The flap
of his staggers, and glitters
of memory. Stubborn. My sister and I take up
the rumple of praying
without supervision.
A woman has the will
and sends his will—without a wrinkle
through the mail. We make it through
the weekend with all its singing,
then receive every email
with again. More very old
grimaces. Notes (mine)
and loops (his). Have you heard—?
The shoved-in ellipses. Time repeats
its September, October,
and meanwhile only hours. Then September
a lot. The fear
that we are reducing
life to a suit jacket.
It’s all he has. Into the again
again. Every necessary name, the opposite,
oppositive. The names he knew
dangling. The straightened names
unmanned. We tell him
in thin moments, and he slips
beyond them. After hours and days his freedom
is sweaty. He is criticized for the shock
of his odor. Prepared to show better
he sits soaped in the shower
after a tantrum. Time in and out,
soaking and heavy. Now
he’s by the ocean and is marveling
at his old habits. Or he’s advancing the car
over cobblestones
to a corner. He can no longer
drive. Between terraces, he unfurls
a hat and walks window
after window. The immense city. He dresses
in beige day after day. Tells the sister, the cousin
what he can’t remember:
every fault as it escalates. He’s off
to the temple wearing his
threadbare jacket. The rest of the year begins
today. It moves around
and we attempt to restore it. My sister
texts more inaudible news. I can’t
concentrate. The emails end
in hours and there’s nothing in front
for me to cross back from.
He calls. It’s night now. Somewhere
he hangs up. We keep talking, the words
subdividing. I sleep with his face
in the case of my brain. Sparrow
and anger from a blanket through night, flailing
limbs. Nowhere more blackness. He knows
my name is something that was said
earlier. The next day is launched
loud from a distance. I swear
to sift through the depths
when the holiday is over. I promised
we could be in the city
of love without reason and this most of all
will not save him. He tells me who
he is. Good dad.
This is every tree. This is gravel; look
at the sunset. Look how the blues spread
through his suit jacket. Blues
browse our names. Time is entirely shallow
sounds. Those last daylight hours
eat and eat and morning comes,
rearranged. What’s been praised are the margins
of childhood, the pulp
of our old tudor, two years
and all the clocks
disillusioned of new possibility,
the drain and the bugs that came up,
winging. His mind ate the language. Language eats
every landmark, and now
we’re all smudges. Can’t more blur
house or ransack what’s stuck
in its nest. Love is each
complicated sadness. A checkbook
with holes in the sides. This will be the last move
to return. The prayers speaking
and he’ll remember only the splinter
of nights and how rescue
became subtractions, and again
our abrupt coordination when he needs
absence. We practice mouth-blame
till he loosens. His mind refusing
to solve every fragment.
A weak cloud moves past
with the insignia of leaving.
We estimate, then go to twenty four-
seven, all the clocks back
to humming. A small room. Many counters.
We used to say we didn’t gamble.
Now we have to.
He shrugs. Does it have to be
constant? He utters another
tragedy. Each phone call is all sky, and then error
from the flesh of my heart. I am
what he cast, and my promise
is crooked. No must but all leaping. The cool
of the pane and later a scotch to calm
the hippocampus. Let it be
spacious where he stores his awkward
artifacts. Don’t worry, we say
to ourselves. We’ll get past
the ripeness. Every tree in this town
has been broadcasting
pollen. Even driving slow, we break
toward time with no
signs. Snow is already scratching
the ground. Check the seasons
and let out their flutters.
Lauren Camp is the author of three books, most recently One Hundred Hungers (Tupelo Press, 2016), winner of the Dorset Prize. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, The Seattle Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She is a Black Earth Institute Fellow and the producer and host of Santa Fe Public Radio’s “Audio Saucepan,” which interweaves music with contemporary poetry.
Photo credit: Anna Yarrow.