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Light compressed to plaid faces
turns the water where the water
makes lines in his face in small colors
called halves. Our failure
to appreciate the correspondence
between the two spaces made
all the more striking the fact we were told
explicitly about it. Shape makes subtle
gestures revealing attachments: reduction
within boundaries, also of distance
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With palms above their fingers
grasping they lift many times
the tiny boxes, glazed and weighted
to release. Overlapping black
obscures much of what’s behind
this movement broadly projected
toward the observer as if conducted
in recognizable space. The wire-
house appears as seen from its front
yard: one set of nearly horizontal
lines converges rightward; another
limns the front-facing planes
of the house and porch and diverges
away leftwards; there are four
window boxes; the windows appear
wedge-like. Edges imitate visual
rays; we can use traces to posture
our imaginary eye level devotionally
below that of the observer, though
we may actually stand above her.
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and through that unfamiliar
medium touched responding
places in the room itself.
With palms above our
fingers grasping we drew
many times the water
upwards from the water
where threads of black between-
matter made the afternoon
wet light through our
hands to bent rows
of pressure on the floorboards.
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a more intense scrutiny of human
features. He understands about
pictures. They are maps that give away
hiding places; study is involved.
I searched willingly for the other
but failed to realize I had been given
any way of knowing where
it was. Silhouette interpreted as shadow–
his hand puppets on a surface barely
visible a hiding event, one sort
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These days of the winter half
months have neither the names
nor dates of weekdays. They push
thumbs against the area between
the house and its relief where
fading edge continuity creates
irresolvable ambiguities. Their
tender manipulation of the pill
boxes opens small spaces in
this plane others could also
occupy. Wire-house turns;
the front porch appears nearer
than the back stoop and all stairs
appear identically sized. Lids
down, they play at introductions
of occlusion–imagine outer
walls opaque. This is a planting
of red in the window boxes,
a repositioning of their vanishing
point beyond each nearby exit.
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If transparent, our perspective,
the water was a weight measure–
summer a side of an opposite
push to push down middle,
this the other way of growing
smaller the season
of indoor effects. We turned
faces to face how closely
we set our fingers grasping
under the low light and the lamp
was a cold bulb turned
forward to forced bloom.
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of illumination. I am aware
of the symbolic potential of certain given
details; arrange them into several sorts
of sequences. The duplicate space
shutters. He hangs the cut-out pictures
from strings in the spare room.
Proportion creeps in. Things that are
greater or much smaller than the objects
we are accustomed to alter
the space, make a lesser world
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Or just behind the observer’s far
right temple where she stands
on the lawn with her making
fingers; in wire-house nearby
exits may be distant entrances.
The house possesses a triangular
quality; tracing its narrow to its wide
takes longer than expected. They push
one-sided images into solid as if
the real-world horizon were pictured
in the flat; they force in qualities
of ordinary spaces. Widening
the hole captures more of the rays
but the images grow too blurred
to be useful. The floor appears
as underground and the stones
of the walk as paper thin concavities
in the paper. She finds as brought
her own anything she finds in this
construction still holding its own.
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contained in the yard
where we stood in the yard
making finger shapes
into threads of black water
like lines. Sudden illumination
opened through any point
dark colors that dispersed
into our grasping an under
the water as a surface
of shades etching weaker
our division, reluctant
into three–
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more livable. Two representations
are active at once; images traced
through the pictures are visible
in reverse on the opposite side.
Connections exist between stages
of incompletion. Our afternoon remains
unfinished–the bedroom wall still
not painted gray. Unexpected
relationships form between
marginal images and shared objects–
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Vaguely, one of two divisions
more or less approaching
equality. Limit to halve what
pieces are found by another.
We do–imperfectly–in order
to present ourselves simply.
Each surface hides an opposition
another reveals, and reveals
fracture when necessary. In
numbers the half holds the same
proportion to the whole as in
objects, but all connection
with side is lost. They refuse
to believe we are figures. She
brings her fingers with equal
pressure against either side
of our house and the pressure
makes her fingers potentially
unlimited bodies lifting the house
toward its margins, accelerated.
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Our palms were black
backgrounds against the water
in the yard where the water
grew from underground
to that horizon drawn
past the end of focusing
on our palms lifted and so
large when inverted
they obscured everything
in the room. We traced
rays from corner to corner
to indicate in the darkness
we felt our blackened
on the inside we figures
occupying spaces
others should also occupy
and our grasping
was mesmerizing because of it.
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the toy revolves a wheel that mixes
colors we take to be papers.
He knows that mark was made
by a nail. We peel back the yellow
wrapper to reveal a minutely finished
production of the room in which
we stand. He knows how to find
the four hiding places, drawn
and miniatured to the life, spectacular
those heavy lines that frame
the water with long periods
of unornamented inactivity.
Kristina Jipson’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming from American Letters & Commentary, Chicago Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Diagram, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, How Void of Miracles, was published by Hand Held Editions. She lives in Indiana with her husband and very small daughter.